Drupal 7 html.tpl.php vs page.tpl.php variables questions/thoughts 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?
Something to keep in mind is that Drupal doesn't work with templates the way a traditional MVC framework will. Ideally you want to have as few templates as possible in your theme, i.e having only one page.tpl.php with some conditionals would be best. If you do need to split things up you can define additional templates with hook_theme() in your theme's template.php and move your header/footer section into there, but in general you'll have better results by not having lots of template variations.