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Here's a half baked idea that folks can think about and improve upon.
What if we didn't have leftcolumn, rightcolumn, centerleft, centerright, centercenter, and centercolumn? What if we didn't think of things in a table column vocabulary?
In moving away from the vocabulary, we could move to DIV with CSS positioning.
The truth is, currently the only thing that makes something go in the leftcolumn when you reach that call in the theme is that you put it there in the theme. As far as the XOOPS core is concerned, it could be on the right, in the middle, top, bottom, anywhere. In reality it is just a label.
What if we called them something else, like "positions" or "place"? Place1, Place2, Place3, etc. You would assign a block to a place by weight and style (or other mechanism if easier). The theme wouldn't care, it would just be a bunch of labeled <DIV> tags. (example <div id=place1>)
This would give theme developers the flexibility they sometimes request when they run into the wall of being forced to choose between having centerleft and centerright blocks appear above the center blocks or below the center blocks, but not both.
Then, all position could be controlled in the CSS.
This idea may need some work... it can definitely wait until Xoops4.