Multiple viewports into the same Virtual Desktop

Question

I have been looking around for window manager solutions that would work nicely for me. While I have found a number of things, I have not yet found anything that really works well for my needs.

Usage patterns:

• A number of "fixed" windows -- firefox, pidgin, a few terminals, that sit around on one monitor and get used. This is easy, but I don't like having them go away when using desktop switching or whatever.
• A lot of "transient" window that I don't need to have up, or don't need to have up much. For example, [many] terminal windows doing minute-to-hour-long tasks, graphs I need to show people who will be back "after lunch", documents I will need to reference "once that job finishes", etc.

Currently, this manifests as the first point on one monitor and the second on another. That means around a dozen terminals, a few document viewers, xmgrace windows, etc. that all are piled up around my desktop. Making things worse, it's often easier to open a new window (yay right click shortcuts) and ssh into whatever machine I need than it is to find the previous window I was using.

I have been considering using xinput to use a pair of keyboards and mice, because I think that would be convenient. At the same time, I really like the oversized desktop feature of FVWM. I think this would allow me to do what I'm looking for.. mostly.

The catch is that I want to let one monitor stay in place, while the other can go wherever it wants. Effectively I'm looking for multiseat.. but I don't want them isolated from each other.