Module development and code questions

i've been hired to build several mobile/wap/phone display module for drupal cms.

I want to do something similar to the l() function - but it don't want html markup in return.. I want just the URL which i'll then use in my custom hook to display in varying non-html markup (wml, mcd etc) or in a sms response.

Can anyone tell me the "right" way to get the correct url, i.e. including pathalias and any other changes made by other modules.

and - is there documentation somewhere for the l() function? i'm getting lost in the drupal handbook..

I currently run a site and we use the Views module to try and sort our queue in order of how many votes it has . Now this seems to work fine for our front page, but on the queue page the view sort seems to have no effort at all! The settings are identical for frontpage and for queue (expect front page has stickies above voting results and queue doesn't have anything sorting of stickies).

The criteria I've used is:

Voting result --- Descending

Works on the frontpage but not on the queue page.

Hello

I recently launched a site and am using the storylinks module for most of my content.

I want storylinks to be called downloads. I tried editing the module myself, and managed to change some references, but couldn't get it all working properly (it links in with my voting modules).

Is anyone able to do this for me?

Thanks

I'm attempting to change the default form of the Type date in one of my tables. By default it is 0000-00-00, however, I want it to be 00-00-0000. The problem is, when I change it to 00-00-0000 and click save, it simply reverts back to 0000-00-00. Why is this and/or how do I make it stick?

Thanks.

For my charity social network site (http://drupal.org/node/69729 for more info, or check the project blog www.makingthesite.com) I'm thinking about editting or perhaps even making my own module. I have some basic skills in PHP, but never built a big robust site or something with php. I'm also just figuring out Drupal. I'm wondering how hard it is to build and/or edit a module.

After a user logs in I want to display their username, how do I do this in php?
$username = ??????;
echo $username;