I agree with you that DNN CSS is not ideal, but I don't agree with you that there are not enough CSS hooks.
I think "
its a dogs breakfast" is bit to negative..
Personally I think that default.css is one of the biggest problems. I started
a thread about this but I seemed to be the only one... Sometimes I can only achieve what I want by changing default.css, something I don't like because it's part of the DNN core in way. I also recognise that changing these kind of things is difficult due to version compatibility.
I think there is to much non CSS makeup (width=100%), inline styles, since you cannot overwrite them, and tables in places you don't really need / want them (example: the links module)
I know this is mainly due to .NET (1.1?) which seems to render a table for everything.
In the end I mostly get a site to look the way it should, but it could be easier.
Don't get me wrong I'm really greatfull for DNN as it is now....
I don't know if I'm the right person to suggest this and if the core team / developers even want something like this but I have a suggestion (if this is not already being done...). There are some people posting about this subject and I know some people tried creating tableless skins, but a lot of these "issues" don't make it into gemini. Maybe it's an idea to somehow collect these wishes / "frustations" / knowledge on CSS in relationship to DNN and how it could be improved. I don't want to riot or create a fork, I just think it would be good to collect the available knowledge...
It' easy to complain about what's wrong but in open source if you want to change something, you have to do more...
If something like this would be started would be glad to spend some time on it.