"It just seems to be a peculiarity of the .cr2 format that all internal features of an actor are represented as dials, whether those dials have any user-level functionality or not."

From a programming standpoint, it makes sense to reuse the functionality of the dial 'object' internally if you already have the code working and the only difference seems to be whether the changes are generated internally as opposed to coming from a UI control. Of course, you can stretch that reuse too far - been there done that :-)

Having Poser's data files be, in effect, a kind of scripting language has enabled people to do a lot of interesting and useful stuff. I wonder if the designers were designing it from a clean slate they'd use the same strategy. 

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken