[Rd] Possible x11 window manager window aggregation under one icon?

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

(Group reply to three emails at once)

On 22 March 2021 at 10:27, Balasubramanian Narasimhan wrote:
| Confession: haven't done this in decades.

Equally green here.
 
| Isn't the usual way to use 'xwininfo' to figure out the information 
| about any X window and set a specific resource in the .X11defaults or 
| equivalent?  Also doing the same with windows that aggregate could yield 
| a common resource, perhaps?

Could be.


On 22 March 2021 at 22:32, Ivan Krylov wrote:
| Grouping seems to be achieved by setting the window_group component of
| the WM_HINTS property of the window:
| 
| https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.6/doc/xorg-docs/specs/ICCCM/icccm.html#wm_hints_property
| 
| ICCCM goes on to say that "The window group leader may be a window that
| exists only for that purpose <...> [not] mapped either by the client or
| by the window manager".
| 
| Is that enough of a direction? I have only ever written X11 code using
| xcb, not Xlib, but I could try to help further if needed.

That is quite promising. Just like Duncan I see now WM_HINTS yet, so maybe by
just giving them we can improve?


On 22 March 2021 at 15:42, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
| I just did a quick grep of the R-devel sources, and don't see WM_HINTS 
| used there at all.  (This is after searching rgl sources, with the same 
| result.)  I'd be happy to add something to rgl if you could point me to 
| an example:  it also uses Xlib like R, so once that works I could 
| propose a patch to R.

I'd love for us to put the focus back to src/modules/X11/devX11.{c,h} :)

The original email I got for the Debian patch that then made it into R's
sources is still here:
  https://sources.debian.org/src/r-base/4.0.4-1/debian/icon-class-patch/

And I think we somehow need to aggregate all three strands: the Xtoolkit
-based info Naras alluded to, and possibly adding hints as identified by
Ivan. It might help to spy on "any" other better-behaving X11 client.

Dirk


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