Here are some thoughts from my initial experiences with i3.
In general my problem with tiling window managers is that windows don't
stay where I left them: close a window and everything gets resized to
gobble up the space, or try to move one window and everything else gets
messed up in the process. I've had more success with I3 than most
because the child containers and tabs allow me to have the top level
container largely left alone so things don't jump about. Also, the three
structure is great because it is easy to understand and navigate.
It seems the split command, either vertical, or horizontal is
essentially the command to create a new container and move the current
window down into that comtainer. Moving the current window isn't always
really what I want (I want existing windows left alone). Furthermore, I
think of the splits as being much like the other layouts and would
prefer if the interface allowed me to create a container that is
initially tabbed or stacked. Similarly, why not allow a parameter to the
layout command of vertical or horizontal?
What I'd really like is the concept of an empty container. I could then
configure my preferred basic layout in .i3/config without having to
startup any applications. Closing the last application in a container
might leave the empty container and so avoid the issue of the rest of
the screen being reorganised. It would also mean that when you hit mod+v
or mod+h in default mode something would actually happen on the screen:
currently nothing visible happens.
I was thinking of simulating this by using a stub application. The
bindsym for creating a container would launch this application and then
do the split. The trouble is how to get rid of the stub application when
the container ceases to be empty and how to get it back when the
container empties again.
Oliver