Define Debut Theme Specification

The Kit initiative that Debut builds on includes a Kit Theme Specification (kitt) providing basic guidelines and rules for themes to work with Kit features.

Ideally, Debut features would work with any theme meeting kitt. However, there are additional challenges here.

There are several main directions emerging in enabling UI control over visual design.

1. Panels + Ctools stylizer. Allows admins to construct custom layouts and style individual elements.
2. Skinr. Allows definition of theme "skins" that can be applied and configured for individual page elements, e.g., a given block. Currently available only in Fusion and AdaptiveTheme base themes, but see #855602: Allowing modules to contains skins.
3. Sweaver, "Sweaver offers a visual interface for completely changing your Drupal theme without knowing any CSS. Through a bar that sits at the bottom of your screen, you can change the fonts, colours, dimensions etc of all your design elements and see the changes real-time." Comparable to the style editing tool packaged with Acquia's Drupal Gardens.
4. Tao + Designkit, which allows multiple layouts per theme (Tao) and configurable colours, images, and other theme variables (Designkit).

Which of these fork the best basis for Debut design isn't easy to judge.

Fusion and Tao basically take opposite approaches. Fusion says, let's put everything we could possibly need in one place--a bunch of regions, a lot of skins. Tao says, let's strip everything we don't absolutely need out.

Of the four, the last is the most fully integrated into Features--not surprising, since Tao and Designkit are, like Features, developed by Development Seed. Specifically, with Tao + Designkit:

• Colours, images, and other theme variables can be configured per space if Spaces is used.
• Multiple layouts are exposed to Context, allowing different contexts to have distinct layouts.

But most existing Tao themes are highly specialized and there are few models to work from. And, seemingly, no contrib drupal.org theme yet uses designkit.

Input welcome.