Module development and code questions

In many of the drupal SQL calls I see something like:

SELECT n.created, n.title, n.nid, n.changed
    FROM node n
    WHERE n.status = 1
    ORDER BY n.created
    DESC ", 0, 10);

What do all the n. before the database feilds and names mean? This is pretty hard to search for as I don't know if this is a SQL thing, a PHP thing, or Drupal thing. And no search engine I can find will include the . in the search. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi,

It's been suggested writing a docBook module using XSLT to transfer XML into HTML, would be a good example of my application development skills. Are there creation guidelines I should follow?

I post media such as audio and video on my site and want to simplyfy the process by using bbcode. I would like to have a media tag that embeds the media player for me.

like [video]www.example.com/examplecss.wmv[/video]

what do I need to modify to get these extra media tags.

I need patch giving functionaliti plural choice when voting, rather then only radio.

Who did such?

Thahks

I'm getting ready to install Flexinode.module and I see there have been several patches to this module.

At the top and in actual file there is this line:
"// $Id: flexinode.module,v 1.36.2.4 2005/02/06 18:20:26 killes Exp $'

does this mean that the file has been updated to include all patches up to 2005/02/06 by killes -- even though on the Flexinode Download page it says this:

"Download latest release (4.5.0, 24/09/2004 - 15:20)"

If wrong guess, please share what it means

I am wondering if there is a way to make it so that when people sign up for my site, they have to pay a sign-up fee. I have played with the ecommerce package, and haven't found a way to do it with existing functionalities of Drupal. Should I just make it so that sign-ups require admin approval and send an e-mail out with a payment link? It would be much easier if I could just integrate this functionality into the sign-up page. Would I need to simply extend the current user module, or how would I go about writing a module that plugs into the current user module?