insert_view does not work in blocks

Insert View is a pseudo filter. It takes advantage of the filter tips functionality but doesn't actually apply its filter at 'process,' as you noted. The filter does its magic using hook_nodeapi(), so it only acts on nodes. The reason for this is to provide the proper context for obtaining the view data to display in the node.

As a result, the filter doesn't apply at the block level. I wouldn't consider this much of an issue since the benefits of inserting a view into a block is much less pronounced than inserting it into a node. I may be having a lack of imagination, but I can't come up with a situation where inserting a view into a block would be preferable to simply creating a block view. (I'd love to be contradicted here.)

You are right, though, that the filter tip appearing under the block edit textarea is misleading.

At this point, I've not had any luck identifying a reasonable method for controlling the display of filter tips from within a module. We're handing off the filter tips to the filter module and it's doing the display and we don't appear to have any choice in the matter (at the module level, anyway).

We could remove the handling of the short filter tips (which are the ones appearing under the textareas) and push those tips out via hook_form_alter() markup. But that brings up other issues (such as mucking up the presentation of filter tips) and bears discussion.

mlsamuelson

Is this the reason why a View can't be inserted in the header, footer, or empty text field of another View?

Without being an expert on how views render, I'm pretty confident saying that yes, this is why Insert View doesn't work in the header, footer, or empty text field of another View.

I've just committed updates to HEAD and the D5 branch that make Insert View a true filter module. You can now Insert Views in blocks.

Please be careful of argument conflicts should you be working with views that take arguments...

This issue was originally submitted for 4.7. The updates have not been pushed down that far, as 4.7 is soon to be dropped.

mlsamuelson