Speaking of a different perspective, you and GP are describing it with different viewpoints and I'm not sure you're fully aware it is different: GP is describi

Speaking of a different perspective, you and GP are describing it with different viewpoints and I'm not sure you're fully aware it is different: GP is describing the Model and View as two co-equal things with something in between that links then. You're describing the Model more as a foundation that the View builds on top of (and this is also how I look at it). I like the stacked view more because it more closely matches the flow of data, making it almost explicit that what's presented to the user is a projection/transformation of the stored data. Views can't really exist independent of that data, they rely on it, while models can exist independent of the view.