Currently there are 5 distinct view templates (list, single, asearch, add, rss) however users may want to omit some of these templates (e.g. omit single or asearch) or have more than one view of a certain type (e.g. two types of list). The current templates approach makes this practically impossible for the average user.
Suggested improvement:
A generic templates structure which will allow the user to determine and design the activity's available views according to one's own preferences. So, for instance, one may want to offer students to select from 3 different list views and omit the single and search views. The template placeholders may be defaulted to the list, single, search etc. but the single and search could be override and redefined as lists. Views could be switch to by a dropdown list in the main view tab.
In addition views could be set to allow edit mode so that even list views would be editable (like quick editing in the gradebook or assignments).
More details in MDL-26983. Vote if interested. Proof of concept commences on 1.9 stable.
Comments are welcome.