In default config (after installation) the terminal is set to xterm. Would be nice to have it in RDEPEND.
I really doubt that you can call it a dependency. Even x11-wm/twm, which as far as I know doesn't run without xterm doesn't have it as a dependency. It is a config runtime dependency and in example I personally would really not like to have xterm pulled when my config has nothing to do with xterm. And I believe 99.% of Awesome users will agree.
I think this should be mentioned in elog if no xterm is installed.
I don't think the users attracted by awesome need this level of assistance. Depending on xterm would probably be annoying for most users who don't want it and an elog seems pointless, since even if you forget to emerge a terminal you'll just quit awesome, emerge one and you're good to go. OK, you may also have to adjust your config once. Thanks for the thought and bug though :)