Most every Etherpad implementation I've seen is pretty much a direct copy of what Etherpad was. I have no idea if this is inherent to the Etherpad source, but it sure seems it. The entire point of Firepad is that you can use it for much more custom use cases, like Socrates: http://socrates.io — no crappy word processing UI, or any of that stuff. Totally custom and easy to do.