If I'm understanding the latter half of this thread correctly it is exactly what I've been wanting in a window manager for a gnu/linux based daw for a long time - a visual patching based desktop and window manager.
Zoom out and you get a patchage like overview of all windows between which you can make connections. You can then zoom into each app object to whichever degree you wish using some combination of modifier key and mouse wheel over the object, make application adjustments and then zoom back out to the overall canvas. I think we inherited the desktop approach from graphical design, where the notion of bounded workspaces makes more sense. I'd rather my desktop were an unbounded extended "canvas" of inter-patchable windows with something like LADIsh and JACK underpinning session interconnection and management.
But who has the resources to pull something like that off?