The current layout system in MAME/MESS is hard to use. It is difficult to create a new template by manually editing an XML file. Ideally there should be a way for people to easily edit layouts in a graphical user interface. Naturally SVG comes to mind when thinking of an XML-based file format for graphics. I think it would be really cool to be able to draw something in Inkscape and use the resulting SVG file as a template for a MAME/MESS driver. Making it easier to create layouts would naturally lead to better quality layouts as well as a larger number of people able to do it by themselves.