screen/integrate changes from numion

[FelixSchwarz]

There is a soapbox fork by "numion" which contains a lot of changes which look interesting. We should screen the repository and integrate whatever commits look sensible.

Licensing note: The code was forked after the OSL relicensing but the author agreed in private email to license all changes.

As for licensing, all changes are originally authored by me, to the best of my
knowledge, no other entity has any copyright interest, you can use them under
the BSD license.