I did this with AwesomeWM. The Lain (plugin/extension/i forget what its called in awesome) has a "centerwork" style layout that solves this exact issue. Actual

I did this with AwesomeWM. The Lain (plugin/extension/i forget what its called in awesome) has a "centerwork" style layout that solves this exact issue. Actually it's really surprising how few tiling WMs support this sort of scenario. I eventually just gave up and switched to KDE+KZones as it covers 90% of what I'd get from a tiling WM anyway.