wkornew,
You could create a custom solution, but then you need the skills to do it, and there are other implications (see the end of my post). On the other hand, you may not find a CMS that perfectly fits your (high) standards, but you can certainly compromise in some areas and find a solution that meets your overall goals close enough. From my experience, you have to be both flexible and realistic with these things. 
wkornew wrote:Writing a simple article is pure hell.
News submission in XOOPS is extremely simple: a couple of clicks, select a topic, fill in headline and body fields, and click send. Depending on your settings, the submission either goes for review, or goes live right away. It can’t get any easier.
There are many modules for article creation in XOOPS, so it is not possible to rate them all together, as this would be a blanket-generalization. Nevertheless, no matter which one you choose, there will be a learning curve, and it will not be as easy as writing an article in a word processor (although some may get close). There is, for example, an article module that supports SPAW, FCK Editor and HTML Area third party WYSIWYG text editors (see http://www.xoops.org/modules/repository/singlefile.php?cid=95&lid=1555).
XOOPS has modules (in many cases more than just one) for many purposes, including but not limited to: news, FAQs, wikis, forums, calendars, classified ads, e-commerce, blogs, downloads, links, directories, document management, polls, help desks, knowledge bases, and graphic libraries (the list is simply too long to put it all here). And all the modules integrate with your site. Check this out at http://www.xoops.org/modules/repository/ .
Access control is pretty thorough in XOOPS, and you can pretty much control every aspect of the site by creating user groups with various levels of access. XOOPS is available in many languages, and it is fairly easy to localize modules (you just have to edit one or more text files). Its look and feel can also be customized using templates (there are plenty of XOOPS templates). I think, all things consider, it would be a good compromise.
wkornew wrote:RailFrog is my last chance+hope.
Correct me if I am wrong, but RailFrog seems to be just a set of (very nice) ideas/goals, but with no developers to implement them yet. It all sounds very nice, but realistically it is not wise to put all your eggs in that one basket.
CMS packages may not be perfect, and each one has its idiocyncracies (or idiocies, if you prefer) as well as a learning curve. But they are also for the most part well documented, and they have a developer/user community to back it up in case you need help (you will need to); you can also find a wealth of informatiom about them on the web.
When you go with a custom solution, you usually rely on one person who, no matter how reliable/trustworthy, may want to move on to different things at some point; you are then left with a code base that nobody understands.
Not that I am advocating XOOPS over the rest, but I though you would want to know a little bit more about it, and perhaps also be aware of the benefits of a CMS over custom solution.
Edit: I just saw the post about Drupal, and although I have never used it, I understand it is very good as well.
It forces me into its own philosophy (separate different kinds of content). It was not at all obvious how to create content and it wants me to enter information that I don’t care about. I need a minimalistic interface, reduced to the bare minimum. BTW, Drupal is only slightly better than XOOPS. I was able to create content after a few minutes, but never felt comfortable because it seems to force me into its own organization scheme, too. We want full freedom. We need a simple page tree that can be organized the way we like.