I think I finally see what you want to do, Dave.
You will merge the "folder chunk" (index page) and the /view/index.vuh functionality into one index.vuh and put it under /, right? That would be brilliant!
It should probably be easy to make content::init "return" any version of a file, not just the live one, if "?version_id=xxxx" was appended to the item's path (I don't think it works like that right now).
That way versions could be templated, too, and we could stop linking toward the /download (or /view) folder - both on the main page and on the "view details" page - and link to / instead.
Too bad this UI change won't make it in time for the 5.0 release (or will it?) ...
/Ola