Yes, there are absolutely aspects of this that are a good push toward core. However, there are a couple of important things here:
1) Drupal 6 should be 6 months away, and this kind of project can benefit now, as well as having a future benefit by having the bulk of the theming work be done now. By being useful now, people who might not otherwise participate in this work might participate and contribute.
Correct. There is always a trade-off to be made between how long people will have to wait for something, how many people will be able to benefit from it (both short and long term), how much work it requires and/or duplicates, and the upgrade problems one wants to impose on their users. Improving the theme functionality in Drupal 6 is going to draw a lot more designers to Drupal than a (temporary) themer pack, IMO. Plus, it avoids duplication of work and causes fewer upgrade pains. Hence, I plan to be working on separating out theme functions into .tpl.php files for Drupal 6. People that are willing to help, including you and/or Ber, are more than welcome to. Of course, you can work on whatever you want -- just wanted to reach out and invite to help for the reasons outlined above. -- Dries Buytaert :: http://www.buytaert.net/