What’s the reason for not having icons on the other locations? The Add, Remove, Up, Down and Edit buttons could also get icons (that already either already exist in Eclipse or are known by “everybody”
from every day’s life).
Note that I don't have an answer, but I fully agree with you that icon really improve the "comfort" of the application as a user.
In Platform and JDT, I usually just repeat the reference state and don't add icons to buttons, but in other projects I work on, I usually try to add an icon about everywhere. And actually rather than building icons or digging existing icons (which is a pretty expensive task), I usually just add emojis in here. They just work and are well known:
* ➕ Add
* 🗑️ Remove
* 🖊️ Edit
* ▶️ Run
* ❌ Cancel
* ✔️ OK
* 📂 Browse
* 🔍 Find
* 🔬 Details
* 🔭 Search (pretty good for remote/cloud search)
* ⏳Pending
* ...
If we can collectively agree emojis are fine, then I'd be glad to contrbute to building a set of reference label->emoji recommendation and upon approval make those used everywhere possible.
Wouldn't it be a topic to decide through Architecture Council?
