I've tried to contact Tim BL about this and in fact got mail from him
before (I assume) he went on X'mas vacation. So it isn't on the
info.cern.ch archive. Mail me if you want a copy.
I also remember somebody else posted in this newsgroup about a similar
change done independently, but I've lost the posting. If you are
reading this, can you please contact me so we can negotiate a merge of
our code?