Roles and permissions

... conversation following on from bug MDL-7764

Is there currently a way in Moodle 1.7.2 to create the "Inspector" role in such a way that the inspector doesn't have a monstrously long "My Courses" list? I need a person with that role to have course:view applied at the site context (in 1.7 terminology).

Can Moodle 1.8.0 do this using hidden role assignments? If I were to apply a role assignment at the System context (in 1.8 terminology) and make it a hidden assignment, would the user see a "My Courses" list or a "Course Categories" list (assuming they have no other explicit roles to other courses)? Is this how hidden role assignments work (as well as not displaying the user on the course listing pages)?

This may be the thing that convinces me to move from 1.7 to 1.8, but (since I have a lot of little homegrown hacks in place that I would need to adapt to 1.8) I want to make sure that it will actually solve the problem first.

Thanks