I made a minor modification of the script to allow me to view which products in the categories.php (/catalog/admin/categories.php) page were designated as "Master" and which were "Slave." Because I entered all my slave products with the same name(s) as the masters, it was impossible to tell with a simple glance at the list.
Here are my mods, if anyone's interested:
In the master products queries (around line 1420 in my copy) I simply added 'p.products_master_status' to each query:
And then changed the table display based on $products['products_master_status'] down around lines 1455 (in my copy - your mileage may vary):
Now, my products list displays as:
Black Leather Studded Belt - Master
Black Leather Studded Belt
Black Leather Studded Belt
(Mind you - if I had just entered all my content with a slightly different name for the slave items, I wouldn't have needed to go to this trouble. But I didn't, so I did. So there. :) )
HOWEVER...
Something odd has happened that I don't believe is related to the code I changed. Now, when I click on a product for a quick overview in the box to the right of the list, I get two sets of "Edit/Delete/Move/Copy To" buttons. The top set of buttons appears to relate to the master item - the "Edit" button, for example - while the bottom buttons appear to relate to a standard (slave) item. (See image below:)
I really have no idea what's going on. I removed my edits above from the script and the extra buttons were still there. Any ideas?