There's a proposal on the wiki authored by Ralph Schindler. However, this, or any other component like it, will not be shipped by 1.0.0.
Shipping 1.0 with the view renderer on and without some sort of simple two-step view, will cause the standardization of the header.tpl/footer.tpl concatenated view approach. I know you don't feel the current write-a-custom-plugin approach for two-step view's is 'advanced' but I just cannot agree with that opinion.
I strongly feel that not including formal layout/two-step support in 1.0 would be a mistake. Layout is an elegant solution, it works and it should be fast-tracked through as it is simply a response to the 11th hour introduction of the new view renderer.
If it cannot be included, the view renderer should be disabled by default. $0.02 Kevin
