Revert "merged branch 'danny0838:rewrite_block' and resolved conflict"

Anika's merge did not pul in the individual patches as one would expect.

Then I messed up when trying to fix this by merging with danny's repo
again but used the wrong branch. So we're still missing two patches. To
have them apply cleanly I have to revert Anika's merge here. Another
merge for the missing two patches will follow.

This reverts commit b17e20ac.