I've been running lighttpd for a few months now, using URL Rewriting to get decent URLs from Gallery. I'm doing vhosting via the HOST variable. For example:

$HTTP["host"] == "www.moregruel.net" {
        server.document-root = "/var/www/wordpress"
        alias.url = ("/gallery/" => "/usr/share/gallery/", "/gallery" => "/usr/share/gallery", "/albums" => "/var/www/albums")

        url.rewrite = ( 
        "^/gallery/([^\.\?/]+)/([0-9]+)$" =>
                "/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=$1&index=$2",
        "^/gallery/([^\.\?/]+)/([A-Za-z_0-9\-]+)$" =>
                "/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=$1&id=$2",

*and so on*

So rewriting is not per-directory via .htaccess, but since you pattern match, you can make it per-directory. It's considerably faster overall than apache 1 on my machine, mostly due to lower memory use. Whether this would meet your needs is up to you.

Steve

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The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the world.
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