physics - 6:30 pm on Apr 26, 2002 (gmt 0)

Thanks ergophobe. I've been reading the oscommerce lists too, a very active community! Here is some very specific info for people which wish to custom mod the SE friendly urls. This is done in the following part of the code in 2.2:
<hint>
The code re-writes the url in /includes/functions/html-output.php
Currently in line 54 (or thereabouts)
Also you will have to go to your mySQL database configuration table and
manaully set Search_engine_safe_urls to true if you have not already done
this.
If your apache server does not have the lookback feature it will not work.
</hint>
[this is a snippet from an email from someone in the list... thanks!]

ergophobe, where is your site hosted? Some hosts, such as chainreactionweb.com {i'm not affiliated, just wanted to drop the name in case others have feedback} offer special hosting deals for oscommerce. This seems good to me because then they understand your special needs such as setting the lookback feature on the server so that using the se friendly urls is possible 'out of the box' (or... well they probably will have taken care of it already).

By the way, you should be able to modify that snippet of code and mess with .htaccess to get all sorts of interesting urls :)