but they have NO knowlede of or disire to learn HTML.

I do not work with such clients. Site maintenance/updating is one of the skills I sell to my clients.

Those that want to muck about directly usually invest in a CMS and I leave them to it.

If you want an offline editor to do this, then the only realistic option you have is Macromedia Contribute, using Dreamweaver-built site templates with everything except the content area locked down.

However, by far the best way forward is a proper CMS running on the server. There are loads out there which are free (GPL), but you might want to look in particular at Mambo Server and Typo 3, which are both very popular. Using a CMS means that the client can control the site content simply through the browser instead of a client-side program, and there is no FTP or other operations other than a simple click to publish.

Installing a CMS and building the template is more costly for the client at the outset, but it more than pays for itself even in the short-term. You should never have to teach HTML to a client.

I have tested out 10ish or so CMSs, 30ish web-based wysiwygs, and 20ish client side apps.

I feel that CMSs limit me greatly.
The web-based wysiwygs are incomplete, and only seem to work from one directory.
The client programs (except dreamweaver) seem to rely on some Internet Explorer renderer that tries to convert my php files to compliant XHTML files, adding annoying tags.

I would settle for an open source solution that does what dreamweaver can:
-opens up the php file
-in the wysiwyg view the php isn't really editable, and not altered when the user adds a table or a list or changes some text.
-Then they upload the file with a click.

Easy. Except Dreamweaver costs $400. Id rather them pay ME that.

First thing I do is write up a disclaimer, absolving myself of any responsibility for the site as of a particular date, and get it signed - AFTER I've made sure they don't owe me any more money!

Then they're on their own. And they hadn't better ask me to bail them out for free either.

I suggest Page Publisher from Interactivetools. It lets you define areas on every webpage in your site that the customer is able to modify. They can get an interface with text blocks for each chunk of text that they can change, and that's it. They can't muck with your overall design, and they don't have to learn FTP, HTML, etc. I think it's like $99, but you just sell the client on the software and add it to their price.

Is there no one here who lets who:

1) lets their clients modify their sites (without a cms)
2) uses open source software to do this?

I charge the client for site maintence. The exception is a new client I just took on and I'm building her a blog that she can update.

benlieb, the program you are looking for doesn't exist.

Any program which is wysiwyg would have to parse the php include statements in order to display the page for editing. That would mean running PHP on the client machine. As offline editors (other than Dreaweaver to a certain extent) generally don't or can't parse them, they are forced to "correct" the problem. If they can't parse the includes, what the client would see offline would not be what they get server-side.

I still am unsure why a CMS doesn't do what you want: you set all the parameters to ensure a common look and feel for the pages - all the client has to do is add the text, and the CMS adds the styles to the finished document.