Icon attribute cannot be added to a custom form?

[cnewtonne]

For my knowledge workflow, I begin by capturing information from multiple sources. I like to assign icons to them for visual attribution e.g. Youtube, Wikipedia, PDF, etc. I have to visit the item attribute pane, locate the ICON attribute, then scroll it to find the icon I'm looking for.

I created a form and assigned to a text template. I noticed that I was unable to add the ICON attribute to this form because probably it is a SYSTEM attribute. Not sure why.

I found a workaround using flags. It allowed me to assign a Wikipedia icon to a flag. But I soon realized a limitation in that if I wanted to flag an item as complete, I loose the Wikipedia icon. It does not allow assigning two flags at the same time.

Questions ...
- Is it not allowed to add an ICON attribute to a user-defined form? Any other clever workarounds?
- Is it possible to define a new list attribute and populate it with icons?

Thanks