should the testtemplates.xml file be required...

Yeah. I think it will be much easier and much more error proof to allow multiple test cases in a single xml file (see ticket #2355 ) and then to treat such a file as a single test template. (Seems DRY?) You can still keep testtemplates.xml optional for those who want to share test cases between different templates.

I think this is quite important, as an average commercial application (especially a web application) has dozens of modules and so it has dozens of test sets with few dozens to few hundreds of test cases in each set. As a result, existing approach ends up in a huge mess of test case files put to a single directory and requires a lot of error prone manual work to update test templates each time you add or delete a test. So, the only workaround I see is to use MS Word or Excel to actually organize test cases and then just refer to such files from an xml test case definition. But this actually makes your plugin unnecessary, as anyway all test case management and testing progress monitoring will be tracked manually using same MS Word/Excel files or their copies.

P.S. I've read your digression about Exploratory testing approach. And I don't want to start another holly war here. Let's just agree that different people do things differently and that they have some reasons to do so.

ok thanks for the comments seva. I've been waiting on making any changes around this area until enough people complained or requested it.

yep, I totally agree people do things differently (in terms of testing etc.). That was just my opinion.

anyway I'll take another look at this issue.