(09-12-2020, 12:13 AM)Guest0x0 Wrote: Q1: Do you think that, with a proper design and efficient hot keys, such "context switching" (changing what windows are displayed) would be acceptable, or if you think that the idea of context switching itself is too much a burden?

I think what do the context switch is the image changing too much. I can't really explain that though, and I've been proved to be wrong on multiple occasions when things come to UI (I don't enjoy building those things anyway).

(09-12-2020, 12:13 AM)Guest0x0 Wrote: Q2: If you feel that context switching may be acceptable in Q1, how many windows are necessary to de *on the screen at the same time* (I don't mean reducing the total number of windows)

I honestly don't know. I think it depends a lot on the number of glyphs you can show per window. Yes, of glyphs, not of pixels, nor of icons nor... glyphs. Because when I work, I work with text.
I think a comfortable setup requires at least a 2x2 grid of at least 80 columns for 30 lines. That's because I use C++ mostly, where I try hard to keep short blocks. With shell scripting or reading logs, for example, I don't split my screens vertically, but I can work with less than 10 lines shown.
That's per screen, for a normal usage (means: not debuging multiple processes at a time, nightmare is probably worse when using faster IPCs or threads).
I use roughly the same setup for my mails and web browser as for my C++ code, too. Not because of the 80x25 tradition of TTYs, mind you, but because I hate having to move my eyes and neck to read a complete line of code.

(09-12-2020, 12:13 AM)Guest0x0 Wrote: 1. It does not integrate with tiling layouts well. Once you have a "tab in split" or "split in tab" layout, things get unintuitive and messy.

2. The fact that i3 treat tabbed layouts as part of the tree, like splits, makes creating and managing tabbed layouts a burden.

Yes, but I think it's because i3's control are not nice. It is bloated (imo) with features people rarely use, yet moving the focus correctly is hard. Well, I suppose one could just put a mark on windows to jump there, but my brain does not work like a CPU, I don't have an IP register nor a call stack in there.

(09-12-2020, 12:13 AM)Guest0x0 Wrote: f you mean "container" by a layout containing several windows, then probably yes.

Container is the original words from i3's doc, IIRC. Its also used, for example, in wxWidgets AUI API (https://docs.wxwidgets.org/3.0/group__gr...__aui.html)