The themes that ship in the 1.1 download still work with 2.0.
That's not good. Obviously, in the 2+ plus years since 1.1 RC3 hit the streets very little has changed with SMF's template system.

The real reason I am posting is because I am looking for an idea of when the public Beta of SMF 2 will be available.
For maximum efficiency and code reuse, I am trying to standardize the templating system I use across all of my sites. The templates won't be the same, obviously, but the way the HTML output is generated will be. A class will determine caching if appropriate, load the templates (which will be similar in style to Wordpress templates--maximum flexibility), then output the code or do any placeholder substitutions as necessary.
This echoing out code in the templates themselves is highly inflexible. It's much better to assign the HTML output to a variable then echo out that variable, or cache it, or substitute it into another template, etc. Much more flexible, as you can see. Right?

So, I kind of need an idea of what is around the corner with respect to SMF2. Right now, I'm thinking I'll have to get rid of the header and footer templates since they are going to be so similar to SMF 1.1. But I will need to extract the keyword, description, title, and meta variables, etc, and then assign them to $GLOBALS to use them in my overall site template. But I also have to be concerned about SMF's lack of separation of logic and presentation because I have no idea where a table row will be echoed out from. As SMF 1.1.x is currently written, stuff comes out of pretty much anywhere. Then we've got issues with duplicate code in different places, etc.
It would be absolutely terrific if I could find a way to assign the forum content minus the header and footer (just the board index, message view, post screen, etc.) to a variable using ob_start()/ob_get_clean() then substitute it into my overall site template using str_replace().
But I have no idea if I will be able to do that given SMF's penchant for using tables for layout and other peculiarities. It sounds like SMF is still going to use tables, which means it will be a decade behind the current state of the art.

I don't want to hear any stuff about how SMF's template system is 3/1000ths of a second faster than other templating systems. I don't care about that. What I do care about is the hours it takes to fit SMF into the overall look and theme of my website.
Thank you very much.
Your friend,
Motumbo