Hey @benbluef,
That is a tricky one for sure. When you use my plugin with FontAwesome 6.x icons, it of course needs to load that asset to be able to show those icons. But FontAwesome 6.x comes preloaded with some advanced tech to make 5.x icons ‘just work’ automatically. So as you’ve seen it is taking your WPBakery 5.x icons and translating them as needed to keep working (as far as it is concerned).
The compatibility checkbox in the settings for this plugin only applies to ACF Font Awesome fields. And further it is only there for selections made with this plugin before upgrading to FontAwesome 6.x. It is basically an attempt at saving people from finding/re-selecting icons when upgrading from 4.x/5.x to 6.x icons. As there were big internal changes in this plugin that made previous selections incompatible with the new format icons are saved in.
The workaround you proposed will sorta get you where you want to be, except that you won’t be able to select any of the icons added in Font Awesome 6.x. But for the most part if an icon existed in 5.x there is an equivalent icon in 6.x. And because of that advanced tech I mentioned earlier, FontAwesome 6.x will figure it out and ‘just work’.
So all of that to say, I understand the problem you are having … but I’m not sure I see a path to fixing it. Fundamentally trying to use both 5.x and 6.x icons together is always going to cause issues as they are not meant to work side by side.
I don’t know WPBakery well so I am not sure where Font Awesome is used in that plugin, and how important those icons are to its operation. Ideally changes could be made within that plugin to either disable those icons or choose the version of Font Awesome that you want to work with.
Please do share any thoughts you have as far as a resolution here and I’d be happy to think it through with you.
