I don't usually have problems with the geometry specified by rows and columns, it would be nice if we could retain this behaviour from the patch.
Even though X11 may have introduced a lot of bad stuff, this one makes sense and simplifies a lot of code and logic. If you are specifying geometry, you should be prepared to handle this, be it by floating the window or adjusting the tile size, or even resizing it by the WM if you want to override it. Never had a problem with this on tiling window managers and should not have, this would be a deficiency (and an underlying complexity) of the WM and not of the program. Just my opinion.
