[ArchonShiva]

DFA42 says you can use points from discretionary skill choices to pay for a template, and proceed to give the thief as an example of having "another 7 points to improve any previous skill or add any of these new ones"...

Except only the thief ans scout are even written like that. No other profession gets anything but "X of these skills". It seems very unlikely that only these two professions would be allowed to do this.

Let's round up all the possibilities. Can you use points from...

a) "X of these skills", when they are various normal [1] skills;
b) "X of these skills", when they are special skills (e.g. Chi skills for MA);
c) "One of", usually weapon skills or packages;
d) "One point on each of X spells" (at least this one says it's points!)
e) "All of these skills" when a specialization can be selected;

I'm not looking for advice on how to handle it, I'm looking for clarification of how to interpret the intent. (i.e. writing a blog post on it and want to stick to RAW)