Like you point out XeTeX has advantages. But many that are picky about typography will not use it because it is unable to use the microtype package ( that needs pdfTeX ).

I am working on Slash theme that complies with web standards. It's mostly editing templates but also some perl hacking.

If anyone feels like helping out it is available from CVS:
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@strict.openflows.org:/var/lib/c vs co strict-600