[development] Blocks and Regions rethink (concept needs feedback)

[Sam Tresler]

I'm aware we just hit code freeze so this is waaayyyy into the future, 
but I have a few itches that need to be scratched soon and want to 
garner feedback (concept needs feedback) on some ideas.

I constantly use and abuse the ability to add regions nearly anywhere in 
drupal and find it incredibly useful.

That said, The blocks admin section has a few highly infuriating ui 
issues.  Namely.

      * You can only assign a block to one region at a time.
      * Current inability to 'clone' blocks.
      * Block admin is at block-admin not inline.

I want to start work on some features that would first create a 'blocks 
available' and a 'Regions Using Blocks' interface at the block admin 
page - In this manner you could take one block and print it in two 
separate regions.  e.g. printing a menu in the footer and the left 
sidebar, or printing "Who's online" block on the left sidebar on one 
page and the right on another.

Second feature: Ability to edit blocks per page.  This, I would imagine 
would take the form of a 'block edit' tab for properly permissioned 
users.  Clicking it would take you to a block configuration page for 
that URL - you could then specify if you want to wildcard the url per 
each block (user/*), and set placement for each block.  I would envision 
this as adding form elements for weight, url, roles, user visibility and 
  region per block -or- a jQuery drag and drop feature (or one degrades 
to the other)

Third feature:  Cloning Blocks.  When you want a block 'just like this 
module generates only different' - cloning it would generate the 
appropriate code in a custom block.  This is much less important to me, 
just wnat to know if others find it useful.



So, is this a worthwhile thing to investigate - what do people think? 
Thank you in advance for your feedback.


--samtresler