Concerning the .htaccess documenation, putting a .htaccess file in a directory should affect this directory and all subdirectories. But I have problems getting this to work:
I have to files, alice.html and bob.html (just printing "Alice" and "Bob"), and this .htaccess in the same directory (/tmp/rewrite):
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /tmp/rewrite
RewriteRule ^alice.html$ bob.html
When I try to access /tmp/rewrite/alice.html I get "Bob" - fine.
But when I put the same html file in a subdirectory /tmp/rewrite/sub and try to access /tmp/rewrite/sub/alice.html I get "Alice".
What am I missing?