Got rid of the horrible layout-elements proc that some bright OF type wrote to handle a maximum of eight portlets in a column. Getting rid of it simplified the layout templates, not surprisingly. If nested "list" tags worked I could get rid of the various simple column layout templates as a matter of fact.
Changed parameter handling a bit ... set_value now takes a parameter id, as do some other procs. set_value in particular was very dangerous as it would change the values for ALL parameter entries with the same key.