I provide sites to specific industries. We use WPMU. If WooThemes was based on one framework, then I could offer all 26 of your themes (and new ones that are released) and only have to update the one parent. My clients would be stoked and my support of theme updates would be reduced.

I do that now with Thematic where I can have industry specific child themes.

The framework concept isnt necessarily for the single user, although I know a few who would appreciate WP Unlimited. The true value of frameworks for me is what I can leverage with them.

I could create my own framework, but that means more support and basically reinventing the wheel.

I think you’re onto something about developers choosing between lots of different frameworks, but I still think that the core adoption or at least promotion of one or two will really spur innovation by newcomers.

I actually think the community solution to the lack of a true templating system, by way of frameworks is pretty clever, and indicative of how importan theme developers are to the future and the proliferation of WP.

I guess the best way is “your way”. And it’s not “my way or the highway” for me, is just that I haven’t found a framework / template / naked theme / whatever that helps me improve my work flow.

So until I do, I’ll stick to my trusty “Simple Canvas”.

But I have to say, that I totally agree with you with regards to these frameworks becoming a “theming framework” instead. For me however, we (read: the WP community and prominent developers) don’t need to settle on one theming framework, but instead we could settle on 2 / 3 / 4.

So in essence, we’d have a similar situation to having to choose between jQuery, MooTools, Prototype etc. etc. Then it comes down to preference, which I’m more than happy about.

Re-reading your comment, I really think you’ve hit the nail on the head!

If you look at Thesis, Thematic and Carrington, you’ll see that’s what they really are, templating systems. I think the term “theme framework” is a misnomer because it makes it seem like the end user or theme “buyer” should be aware of all the functions and hooks; I don’t think that’s the case. The real benefit from a templating system comes with agile development and that’s really not aimed (nor should it be) at end users.

I think you come at frameworks (or templating systems) from the perspective of someone who sells ready-made themes to end-users. Sure, developers and site designers use Woo Themes too — but I’d guess the bulk of your sales are from end users who like the addition of stylesheets (which is really all a child theme is — and before people start yelling at me and saying that child themes are “so much more” – clearly I’m oversimplifying, but thats the essence of a child theme) and the backend options to add and play with plugin stuff.

OK, for those users – no, a templating system is probably of little use — but again, that’s totally not the audience (at least not unless one templating language really takes off).

And you’re right, for someone like you who already has an agile workflow, learning a new templating system (let alone learning four or five) is not conducive if you are trying to save time. But for developers who either don’t have their own agile system in place or don’t want to spend the time creating one, learning the templating language and additional hooks is absolutely a time saving and productivity increasing measure.

Here’s my only issue with frameworks/templating systems: there are already too many of them. As a designer, I don’t necessarily have time to investigate, learn and then try to implement every single framework to see what works best. That means you either try to create your own agile system or commit to learning and using one more than the other. This puts widespread acceptance and adoption of these systems at arms length (because it is all very chicken and egg) and really limits how many child themes, add-ons and other innovations that come out of official templating systems.

Sandbox (which Thematic was derived from — though obviously it has evolved considerably now) looked like it had the best shot of making it into WP-Core; now that it’s gone (or at least, it’s main developer, Scott is no longer developing it further), Alex King and co’s Carrington probably has the best shot of being included in WP-Core. I think Thesis is a really, really great “framework” and although I haven’t talked to Chris specifically about whether or not he views it as a templating system of sorts, I’m sure he does — seeing as he has put so much of that sort of functionality into it, but it isn’t GPL (and I’m sure it won’t be), so that’s a wash.

If something like Carrington or Thematic or another framework/templating engine was integrated into WP-Core, even as an option, it could open up all kind of possibilities. That would then be what end-users who want to modify could “learn” rather than just WP-hooks.

Maybe I’ve been spending too much time with Django and XSLT, but from a development standpoint, I really enjoy keeping my code and my design elements separate from one another and that’s where frameworks become really attractive.