The standard set of project temples are inconsistent with each other. As someone else recently pointed out in the Mac Support forum not all templates use the compile time placeholders for title pages. I’ve observed that not all templates place “front matter” in a dedicated Front Matter folder to be selected at compile time; instead this material is in the first document in the template’s draft/manuscript folder (for example the Non-Fiction with Sub-Heads template). And if memory serves there have been posts in the forums that the sample outputs included in the template do not match the template in which they are held.
Project Templates should be based on “best practice” or at least exemplary practice. The provided templates really should be rationalised and made consistent with each other and with themselves to give new (and old) users examples of that best and exemplary practice for creating templates.
Probably something for 3.0 rather than for any up-coming 2.x release. But the templates need to be improved.
The project templates have been created over time, and during that timespan best practises have changed and evolved to some degree, I suppose. Although, the templates are intended to show different ways of doing things, too - they are meant to serve as examples as well as templates. (In the case of the example in the Mac forum, there is no particular “best way” there - either using Compile tags or having the name and project title inserted during project creation both work as well; most templates use the former for title and author and the latter for name and address.) Also, the use of the front matter folder is only really necessary for projects where the front matter folder may change for different outputs. For something like a script, which is almost always going to be printed in the same format with only a title page, there is no advantage to putting the title page in a separate front matter folder over placing it directly in the Draft folder, and therefore script templates tend to eschew the use of a dedicated front matter folder. In that regard, I think the current templates still show best practices for 2.x, tailored to each particular format, but if there’s a particular example you have in mind that no longer shows the best way of doing things, please let me know.
All the project templates will need recreating for 3.0 anyway, however, given various changes that will affect them, such as the introduction of back matter and a completely overhauled Compile interface and settings system, along with new concepts such as “section types” and layouts for determining compiled formatting, a styles system, and so on.