Can emacs window be "partially" dedicated? - emacs

Question

I'm using dedicated.el which is very similar to dedicate-windows-manually.el to manually mark certain windows as "dedicated" to their buffer and also inelegible for splitting by various commands that open new buffers (grep, compilation, etc.).
But I really only want the second part.
In other words, I want find-file, kill-buffer, switch-buffer and so on to work as if the current window was not dedicated. But I want other commands (grep, compile) to honor the dedicated status and not split that window.
I made a small attempt at this, but it doesn't work properly and seems like a misguided way to go about it, likely missing many cases.
(One of the problems is that the "dedicated" minor mode is associated with a buffer while set-window-dedicated-p applies to a window; this could be overcome, but I still feel there must be a better way to accomplish what I want...)
(defun with-undedicated (f)
(interactive)
(let ((was-dedicated (bound-and-true-p dedicated-mode)))
(progn
(if was-dedicated (dedicated-mode))
(command-execute f)
(if was-dedicated (dedicated-mode)))))
(defun undedicated-find-file ()
(interactive)
(with-undedicated 'ido-find-file))
(defun undedicated-kill-buffer ()
(interactive)
(with-undedicated 'ido-kill-buffer))
(defun undedicated-switch-buffer ()
(interactive)
(with-undedicated 'ido-switch-buffer))
(global-set-key (kbd "C-x C-f") 'undedicated-find-file)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-x k") 'undedicated-kill-buffer)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-x b") 'undedicated-switch-buffer)
edit
The following was performed to test Drew's answer:
(defun make-weak-dedicated ()
(interactive)
(set-window-dedicated-p (selected-window) "weak"))
(defun dedicated-status ()
(interactive)
(minibuffer-message "window-dedicated-p: %s" (window-dedicated-p (selected-window))))
Making the window "weak"ly dedicated does indeed do what I want: grep and other popup buffers do not replace the buffer in the weakly dedicated window. However, in that weakly dedicated window, find-file seems to reset window-dedicated-p to nil as tested by my dedicated-status function, so I still don't have a technique to prevent popup buffers from using or splitting a window and allowing find-file etc. to work as normal within that window.
clarification
Sorry for not being clear. Here's what I want to happen:
I mark a window as [weakly] dedicated (or whatever equivalent may exist)
I invoke grep, compilation, and so on, and they do not split that window nor replace the buffer in that window (instead splitting some other window that is not marked dedicated)
Within the weakly dedicated window, I invoke find-file, which replaces the buffer in the window but leaves the window weakly dedicated to the now changed buffer
It's that last bit that isn't working how I had hoped: after find-file, the window is no longer weakly dedicated (window-dedicated-p is nil). Since the property in question is associated with the window, I find it surprising that changing the buffer affected that window property, but so it is.

Answer 1

See the Elisp manual, node Dedicated Windows. If you use function set-window-dedicated-p to give a window a non-nil and non-t value then function set-window-buffer will respect it as a weakly dedicated window. That may be what you are looking for.