jQuery sits pretty much at one end of the libraries spectrum, being mostly a DSL about dom manipulation. So if you want a bit more structure by using e.g. YUI or MooTools, would there be any big issues?
I started researching the space for building real Javascript applications fully biased on doing it with x and JQuery. But after a bit of research and prototyping I was sold on the quality and coverage of YUI.
- It has simplified DOM selectors like JQuery
- A solid Base class to extend for everything
- A fully extensible widget class/lifecycle
- Datatable has just hit beta http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/3/datatable/
Zepto is a lighter-weight jQuery compatible library- so you shouldn't feel as bad about having it as a dependency. It might also be possible to have a stripped build of jQuery.