.info are no shortcuts/links at all.
A Project Icon tells a "project" file (like an Image, Text, Productivity App Project etc.) with which tool it should be associated when doubleblicked, like Windows is doing with file extentions.
A Tool Icon starts a tool with the stored settings/comments/stack etc.
There are also Disk and Directory icons.
A .info should rarely be alone, almost always they have a corresponding underlying "real" file. I like this concept and prefere it a lot over embedding the icon image in the exe, for example. It is very compatible to other OSes, e.g. you can give certain filetypes an image without the file itself knowing about this image.
