Thomas Goirand wrote, on 3/23/2009 2:10 PM:
First, you need to have a look at the AllowOverride directive of apache,
Found the problem! I didn't realize that the default UserDir module configuration in apache2 was "overriding" my other AllowOverride settings; by adding "options" to AllowOverride in /etc/apache2/mods-available/userdir.conf I'm able to enable/disable php5 in htaccess per directory as with apache1.3.
Adam