First off I am very new to Drupal but not very new to other frameworks and CMS's (symfony, cake, codeigniter, wordpress)

So I am trying to make a theme and it seems like I want to put a lot more stuff in html.tpl.php then drupal wants me to?

Like for example $logo, why is that not available in html.tpl.php, I don't want to include that in every variation of the page template, do I?

Or should I be thinking of page.tpl.php more as the wrapper than html.tpl.php.

I basically think the page template should only display content for that page, anything around that (ie, nav, logo, footer) should be in html.tpl.php. but drupal seems to be set up opposite? Why does this feel wrong to me?