Symfony is a lot more like Nexista than I originally thought. I use the following web directory structure right under the web server directory root:
build/ conf/ htdocs/ logs/ php/ tmp/ usr/ xml/ xsl/
while symfony uses this layout:
apps/ frontend/ backend/ batch/ cache/ config/ data/ sql/ doc/ lib/ model/ log/ plugins/ test/ unit/ functional/ web/ css/ images/ js/ uploads/
Doesn't seem to support xsl, which is too bad.