Michael ... XML is how stuff will be imported into the system, without doubt (since every specifies that this is how it will be done)
But internally as Dave and Ola point out, the best thing to do is to use our standard db_multirow and similar tools to extract the data. I mean ... we'd have to do that anyway, and if we converted it to XML ... where does the designer work with that? They write code to munge it to something that's fed to the user's browser? Page designers can't do that. They can, however, use templating tags that are just extensions to the HTML they're used to, which is what they get with the current scheme.
As far as using frames ... the place for a site customizer to do that is in the site's master template. You would build your frame structure (top/bottom, left/right, whatever) there and include the proper horizontal or vertical curriculum bar in your top or left frame and the <slave> (i.e. template output for the package page being generated) in the other.
Forcing frames at the low-level requires all sites using the feature to be frame-based. But not forcing them at the low-level does not *preclude* building sites using the feature from using frames.
That's the difference. Put the choice in the hands of the site designer. This isn't about being "anti-frame" but rather being "anti-locking-you-into-frames"
We might want to provide sample master templates that implement top/bottom, left/right styles both with and without frames for folks to reference as examples, of course.
