Better Theme Settings

We have been struggling with options for users to control how their sites look without creating their own themes. Initiatives to get more themes contributed don't really seem to work that well. I want to discuss ideas about how we can improve this.

I have some ideas about how this could be done, but I need feedback from theme developers to see if any of them would actually help.

• How can we make it easier for theme developers to make themes more configurable or reusable
• How can we make it easier for users to control the look and feel of their sites at a more granular level
• How can we make theming more component based so that pieces can be reused more easily