I solved this problem by extending a link tool we built (initially for NVelocity) for Scriban. A member of the community shows how to do the migration here.
Here you can see several methods exposed to help build the various parts of the link.
<div class="field-link">
{{ $linkUrl = sc_linkTool.get_field_link_url i_item "Link" }}
{{ $title = sc_linkTool.get_field_link_title i_item "Link" }}
{{ $target = sc_linkTool.get_field_link_target i_item "Link" }}
{{ $class = sc_linkTool.get_field_link_class i_item "Link" }}
<a href="{{ $linkUrl }}" rel="noopener noreferrer" title="{{ $title }}" target="{{ $target }}"><i class="{{ $class }}"></i></a>
</div>
Not yet complete...
The "Link Description" is blank because I no longer need it for this use case.
Initially we stored the unicode text in the "Link Description" but it appears that sometime after Sitecore 8.2.7/SXA 1.7.0 the text is html encoded. This meant that our previous approach using a VariantField to render the Link field would no longer work.
