<blockquote><i>Although aD's underlying content repository architecture is alive and well, the community basically decided to throw out the CMS itself because it had serious problems and nobody was particularly enthusiastic about wading into the code to fix it.</i></blockquote>
That probably overstates the case a bit, though it was probably accurate a year ago.
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The CMS UI is indeed fairly wretched, but there are lots of pieces in the CMS that are worth saving. It knows how to automatically build input forms from properly defined objects, for instance, through an facility that lets you register entry widgets to attributes. You can attach output templates to content types, too, of course.
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It was obviously originally designed as a standalone system and integration with the ACS is a bit haphazard, as is made obvious by its insistence on the user having a screen name and on its parallel login code (it doesn't use the standard ACS login pages).
<p>Personally I think ETP would've been a stronger piece of work if the CMS had been cannabalized for its best parts and if its weaknesses had been analyzed. ETP is a fine little tool but it's not clear that it's a full replacement for the CMS.
