Any plans for a Linux version of this?
Yes there will be. I finally got around to installing an Ubuntu VM with gcc-4.5 and compiled them. will upload soon. I'm going to see if I can get OSX running in VMWare too and if so, I'd be able to include OSX versions too.
Could hotkeys from the dfhack-init be overlayed into the game UI, whenever they are relevant?
That would be useful, but it would need changes to base dfhack. Firstly the syntax for defining keybindings has to be extended to allow a description to be added (that would be the text that's displayed ingame). Also it may be necessary to do some changes to allow plugins to get at the keybinding data... but I haven't looked into that area of the code so maybe that already works. After that a plugin could be written that reads the keybinding's constraints and displays hotkeys where appropriate.
Try suggesting that in the dfhack thread, see what they think.
Well anyways, since you already maintain this version of zone which hooks into the pen/pasture and pit management screens I'd like to make a request rather than doing it myself right now (mostly because I'm lazy ). I didn't look at your code but I believe you use the filter "unassigned" to get a list of "not pastured" creatures, right? Could you please add this one to the pit subscreen as well? Optimal would be a filter for "in a cage which is not built".
Oh did you right the original zone plugin? I'm not really maintaining it, I just decided to put my code in there because of the existing functions I would be able to use. But I might continue to do more work in it in the future. I was thinking of adding some autopasture functionality to manage farm animals. I just haven't yet come up with a UI design that's both flexible enough to be practical, but simple enough to use.
As for the cage filter, when I started writing this UI I also intended to have the filtering you're talking about for pits, but I hit some complications that made me decide to put it off. I think they were to do with cages and I think that was probably the same reason that stopped you adding that filter too. I can't remember what the problem was either... I'll look into it again. I recall thinking "Well this is annoying... but at least people can search for the trolls and goblins even if I can't make a filter for the cages".