Run, Elk, run..
Are those theme changes very big? Would there be a good bit of work trying to port them from RC2?
There are some changes around.
Some important ones to index.template.php and some to less modified files.
The attached is a diff between the RC2 and the current master (what should be 1.0 final unless of other issues), you can search for the files you have changed and see what are the differences.
There are many changes as I can see. I will stop making themes until 1.0 version, so there's less work in long run :)
That looks like the diff for all the template files (all templates, js, css) so its a lot more change than what is going to effect your efforts. Of course we are at 1.0 at this point as well, so the changes are kind of done.
Attached are some side by side report files (htm) that show the changes to each file rc2<->current, should make it easy to add things that you may need.
Yeah, some more than I wanted in fact.
index.template is my fault, I shouldn't have changed it... :-\
I like that change, it made a couple of things I did extra easy, like the custom search box.
You can certainly do that, and it will work fine. The css updates fix some simple things and it should be a easy to import those back to any custom theme.