R devel - Mar 2021 - Possible x11 window manager window aggregation under one icon?

[ I hope the Subject: is arcane enough to reduce readership to a handful :) ]

Running the default window manager in the Linux distribution I am running,
multiple 'windows' of the same program are usually aggregated under one
icon.
I typically have numerous (gnome) terminals, several top-level emacs windows,
likely more than brower window (even with tabs) and so on. They all aggregate
under the top-level icon

R plots however all have one each. Needless to say I may also have more than
one plot device open...  Would anyone know how we can force these to
aggregate under just one?  I had some digital fingerprints on the .desktop
file that ships with simply because someone first sent it to me as a patch
for the Debian package. But I know nuttin' about the XDG desktop
specification and all that. I had one idea regarding window titles, but those
are different for the terminals and emacs windows too.  Anybody have an idea?

Dirk

-- 
https://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org

Confession: haven't done this in decades.

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?

-Naras

On 3/20/21 9:51 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> [ I hope the Subject: is arcane enough to reduce readership to a handful :)
]
>
> Running the default window manager in the Linux distribution I am running,
> multiple 'windows' of the same program are usually aggregated under
one icon.
> I typically have numerous (gnome) terminals, several top-level emacs
windows,
> likely more than brower window (even with tabs) and so on. They all
aggregate
> under the top-level icon
>
> R plots however all have one each. Needless to say I may also have more
than
> one plot device open...  Would anyone know how we can force these to
> aggregate under just one?  I had some digital fingerprints on the .desktop
> file that ships with simply because someone first sent it to me as a patch
> for the Debian package. But I know nuttin' about the XDG desktop
> specification and all that. I had one idea regarding window titles, but
those
> are different for the terminals and emacs windows too.  Anybody have an
idea?
>
> Dirk
>

On Sat, 20 Mar 2021 11:51:41 -0500
Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:
> R plots however all have one each. Needless to say I may also have
> more than one plot device open...  Would anyone know how we can force
> these to aggregate under just one?
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.

-- 
Best regards,
Ivan