Module development and code questions

What is the accepted method of collecting a list of values from a textarea in hook_settings and recording the list of values as a serialised array in the variables table? Or is it better to just save them as an unserialised string, as block.module does, for example?

Insert a footer in tablesort_sql is it possible?
(I want an ordered table with a sum of a column in footer.)

bye
Gianni

How I can, changing this code:

Hello,
I wanted to uprgrade existing 4.6 ecommerce module to the new forms API in 4.7.
I have used formupdater.module and documentation, but not all aspect of using new API is clear to me.

Please tell me how to put custom output to the $form array i.e in the store_settings function

all I want to return is the $form array as the documentation suggest but there is still need to add additional output like:

t('<h3>Store module dependencies</h3>');

and

Hello. I`m not a developer. Just ask :)

Hello

I am using the pathauto module and it work great for me, i want to have url like

mywebsite.com/myarticle-title-bla-bla.htm

The default url by pathauto module is

mywebsite.com/myarticle-title-bla-bla

Thanks