perfidy

The Ministry of Minor Perfidy's Bureau of Retributive Software Development has at no cost to you¹1but at great cost to the code-whittling php pixies delivered another magical tool, available to everyone on the internet²2available in that anyone can see it on a webpage, but rather less available in the sense that only Drupal sites can make use of it. This new tool is Perfidy's special and custom Hidden Format Tips module.

The Hidden Format Tips module can be found here, and installed in the customary manner.

But wait, you ask! What does this amazing tool do? This tool has a singular purpose, to hide the format tips that appear below text input boxes on Drupal sites³3you can see one at the bottom of this page, providing 1) you're viewing this post on its own page and 2) comments are not closed. These format tips are, indeed, useful at times - they tell your beloved readers what sorts of things they can put into the text box, avoiding frustration and anguish. However, these format tips are often lengthy, unwieldy, and not amenable to change. This module allows you to hide them behind a clickable link - revealing themselves only when they are useful.

But there is a second, secret and subsidiary purpose to the Hide Format Tips module - not only can you hide them, you can change them. On a per-format basis, you can edit the text that would normally appear as a format tip. You can make your own version of format tips, suited to your particular and unique idiom. Or put something else entirely in that space - commenting policies, political manifestos for your agrarian reform party, solutions to Fermat's Last Theorem, just anything at all!

And as an added bonus, you can also change the wording of the link to something closer to your heart's desire. What more could one reasonably ask for^††please don't answer this question?