Provide either image path token or image path string formatter for image field

Hello!
In Drupal 6 using Imagecache, one always could output not only the themed image format itself but also it's URL/path. In Drupal 7 image field core, this is no longer supplied.

I guess, this is a request for Drupal core image field; I found no comparable posts aside from this question, but I suppose it's the image field module that needs to supply either one of the following parameters for use in views:

• an image path token (for rewriting) or
• an image path text-only formatter for the image field (preferred, as this would be synchronous to the way imagecache worked in Drupal 6)

(A similar issue has been posted in the Views issue queue)

This is a feature I used extensively in Views outputs mainly to generate custom lightboxes / supplying variables to javascript (it's also often proposed in Views support posts).
I know, it's possible to get the path string using a custom field template (as described here) or the Custom Formatters module (described here), but the first solution is a big complicated overhead and the second one another extra module considering the trivial usecase (+ another update nitpicking from Drupal 6).