Remove the numsections/orphan sections option, and just rely on hidden sections

[james-cnz]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. I think the numsections/orphan sections option can be a bit confusing, and isn't really necessary, as sections can be hidden instead. Also, I think it would be nice to be able to simplify the Moodle course format code, by removing the numsections/orphan sections related code. I was thinking about creating a Moodle pull request for that, but remembered the Grid format still uses this code.

Describe the solution you'd like I think the Moodle 3.3 Topics format has code to convert orphan sections into hidden sections when the course format is updated, or when a course from an old format is restored. I guess this code could be copied, and the change would otherwise probably mainly involve removing numsections/orphan sections related code.

Versions you are currently using (please complete the following information):

• Moodle: 4.1 on the production server
• Format: 400.2.0 on the production server (but I downloaded the latest on a test server to check the feature was still present)
• Browser and version: Firefox version 115.10.0esr (Debian version) (64-bit) on Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) at home, mainly. Firefox on Windows 10 at work, mainly, but not sure about the version, because I'm currently at home.

Funding I can't offer any funding. Maybe I could contribute code, though--I'm a Moodle plugin developer myself. If it's of interest, and I get some time, I'll look into it.