MetaEdit+ will automatically create small icon versions of your symbols to display in toolbar buttons, menus, lists etc. All elements except property and generator labels will be included, and all conditions will be treated as true. If there is no symbol, or if the only elements in the symbol are texts that would be too small after scaling to the size of the icon, MetaEdit+ will build toolbar buttons with an abbreviated form of the type name.

To override the automatically created icons, you can also define a separate symbol for use in Object and Relationship icons. As there are different sizes of icons used in the toolbar and lists, and between different platforms, the icon is defined as vector graphics. You can of course use a bitmap as the sole element of the icon, although scaling to different sizes may then not be ideal.

The Icon Editor (shown in Figure 3–17) is thus a vector graphics editor, effectively a subset of the Symbol Editor. There are no connectables, no property or generator labels, and no conditions.