I've grouped the feet to match what we have for the hands. While I see the benefit of a Toes group, it would be a ghost group with no bones since I will have the metatarsals linked to the toes. We can have the foot group with the toe controls there, like the hand does for the fingers. As for DS and the shoe groups, I recommend grouping the shoe how you would like, then transfer the rigging without the "transfer groups" option checked. This way you can maintain your groups and have the toes as ghost bones.
My point would be that we don't pose the feet the same way we do with the hands. Hands always need to be posed, to include the individual fingers. In my last render, Dawn is leaning on a table with her hand resting on it, so I had to pose each finger individually. She has her other hand against her chest, where again, I had to pose each finger individually.
The feet, however, are posed in a completely different way. For once, Dawn is [normally] wearing shoes in most renders, so we don't pose individual toes. The process with feet posing is about making the feet work with the type of shoes Dawn is wearing. We basically only pose only the foot and the all-toes, and that encompasses 98% of all Dawn renders I have done since 2013.
The problem I have often faced was that Dawn has only 1 single foot bone, so feet can only remain flat, bending only at the all-toes. This is where the metatarsal bone comes in - to allow arching the foot like it does in real life (example below). This could be a ghost bone controlled only by dials, since I would not always need it, depending on the shoes or pose. However, there was _never_ a case when I didn't need to pose the all-toes in any scene. If I can't select the all-toes group directly from the figure, that would be a problem. This would mean dial hunting on a bone that is _always_ posed. Quite impractical in a real-world scenario, based on my experience with Poser/DS figures. That is probably why we have never seen a figure that doesn't have that group.
In the example below, the metatarsal arches the foot, and the all-toes bend the toes. They have each a different purpose.This is the kind of pose the original Dawn cannot do.
Conversely, I rarely pose individual toes, but they get dedicated groups? That seems counter-productive when posing a figure. For once, individual toes groups get in the way when trying to select the all-toes group from the viewport. It is common when I have to turn the camera all over the place trying to select the all-toes, because the individual toes get selected instead.
Having that said, it would make more sense if we did the opposite - give all-toes a group, and make the individual toes ghost bones controlled by dials. Even if we leave the individual toes groups, and even if they get in the way, I believe an all-toes group should be mandatory in any figure because that's a group we _always_ have to pose. I have never seen a figure that doesn't have this.
I understand you said you wanted the hands and feet to have a similar rigging layout, but again, we don't pose these in the same way. If I have to go dial hunting to find the all-toes controls, that would be an extra chore I have never had to go through with any other figure. In my humble opinion, the all-toes group is way more important than the individual toes. I always have to pose those because Dawn is rarely flat-footed in my renders. Don't get me wrong, it's great to have more control over the individual toes, but [at least to me] a figure where we can't select the all-toes directly from the viewport would be unthinkable. I am saying this as a user, not a content creator. I have never seen a figure that doesn't have a toes group - that would be impractical.
