Easier configuration of Drupal 7 on shared server in subdirectory?

I've seen several differing approaches for trying to work with Drupal 6 in a subdirectory (e.g., www.mysite.com/drupal) on a shared server so that the user doesn't see the /drupal in URLs. It involves non-intuitive work in the .htaccess file(s) and I don't think it helps performance much, when it works.

Any chance Drupal 7 will be engineered in a way to make this easier to set up (with or without modules)?

For example, one of the issues I'm running into is that menus show the original path in the URL (with the drupal/) so I need redirects to show the user the URL without Drupal/.

If nothing else, it would be great to have one recipe documented for the .htaccess file that is tailored to Drupal that is likely to work for most users on shared servers.