Hmm I found out its a combination of accept path info and multi views thats producing this, multi-views basically says to expect wacky behavior, but then that in turn makes the rewrite engine documentation incorrect, a rewrite rule should take precedence one would imagine, oh well. I guess they are going to chew me alive for commenting on their docs
This is why they have a reputation for being more complex then the other web servers, yeah it works, so does freaking chizzeling punch cards from blocks of stones it doesnt mean its practical or the best way
Update:
I inform them their documentation does not state rewrite rules run _after_ those modules, nowhere I could find anywhere about the order the modules run in their documentation, so I make a suggestion and they keep shutting me down, so I ask "So if there are issues with the documentation then APACHE doesn't want to know
about it? Really?"
Their official statement:
"the number of interactions between your choice of configuration of
the entire array of modules cannot reasonably be documented" ...
"Reopen this upon threat of being blacklisted to apache.org topography, your
immature behavior is not amusing. You have been told repeatedly that this
is not a support forum."
So I try to bring a gap in their docs to their attention, and they threaten to block me from the entire apache.org domain ( too bad the tracker runs on bugzilla.org ), which would basically impede me in what I do for a living, oh and to top it off a personal insult
Hopefully this thread saves other people time, I'm going to do some serious reading up on lighthttpd, so glad I run ZF routes and can easily switch over since apache is clearly NOT SANE, they could have just wrote in the first place "thank you for your suggestion we will pass it along", in my opinion they are the ones acting immaturely.