Suppose I view the details of a pre-defined role such as Student (site administration -> Users -> Permissions -> Define roles -> Student). By default, the Legacy role type shows as LEGACY ROLE: Student. As I understand it, this means that the Student role contains capability called Capabilities/moodle/legacy:student which is used for backward-compability with pre-1.7 code.

On the same View role details page, I see a button labeled "Reset to defaults." As I understand it, this button provides me with a way of restoring the original Student permissions, in case I get myself into trouble. And indeed, it seems to work this way. However I am troubled by the wording of the confirmation dialog which asks me to confirm the reset. It says

::::::::Are you sure that you want to reset role "Student (student)" to defaults?
::::::::The defaults are taken from the selected legacy capability (student).

Is this just careless wording, or is there some deeper meaning, which eludes me? Surely the defaults are not taken from a "legacy role;" they are taken from the definition of the default Student role, which Moodle (thankfully) remembers. Role defaults and legacy role type should be completely orthogonal.

Just to add to the confusion, suppose I start with the default Student role and change the Legacy role type to None. AFAIK the only consequence of doing this should be to break old code that depends on the legacy capability. However when I save changes and go back to the View role details page, the button which used to be labeled "Reset to defaults" is now labeled "Clear permissions/" Why did the label change? The button should have the same meaning as before.

This is causing confusion – see discussion http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=86926.