So, like I said in my other reply: this was back when i3-gaps was pretty fresh. I don't recall the inverse_outer outer setting, and looking at the github repository, it looks like it was merged in 2018. I'm talking about something that happened like ten years ago :-).
As for this part:
> As far as windows being too small to read comfortably I'd advise you to place no more than 2-3 windows per workspace. For the benefit of those who don't use i3 workspaces are per monitor.
Yeah, this is pretty much where the fiddling comes from.
I don't want to use 2-3 windows per workspace. I sometimes have to work on a piece of code and have 8-10 PDFs open for it -- datasheets, reference guides, schematics and whatnot, at which I want to be able to look from time to time. Sometimes while I'm also looking at the code, sometimes in full-screen (because I'm looking at a big diagram). Sometimes I need to look at a part of a diagram while I'm looking at the code. So I need them to be in the same view as the code. All in all -- including specs, standards, the code window(s), a few xterms -- I easily have 12-15 windows open in order to work on one thing, and it's not really optional.
i3's tabbed view is sort of what I wanted for the PDFs but it's annoying that, if you want to switch to the right one using nothing but the keyboard, you have to go through all of them. You go back and forth, not to the Nth tab (or at least you couldn't back when I tried i3).
That's actually what I liked about ratpoison. Instead of trying to be smart, it just let me multiplex my screen, which is what I really wanted.
I could sort of bend my workflow around all this and, through a complicated set of chords, make use of the whole thing in a productive manner. However, it was anything but convenient. I'm way happier with a floating WM and do a lot less fiddling with the windows.