Problem with command-line parsing. Affects OpenID auth

Hi.
I'm trying to write an Albatross wrapper for OpenID, and one of the
phases of authentication is when the OpenID server redirects to
something like:
http://myserver/login_continue?openid.assoc_handle=%7BHMAC-SHA1%...
Nothing I can do about it. OpenID is not MY standard

openid.assoc_handle gets parsed and this raises an error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/albatross/app.py", line 282, in run
    self.merge_request(ctx)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/albatross/app.py", line 366,
in merge_request
    ctx.merge_request()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/albatross/context.py", line
332, in merge_request
    self.set_value(name, value)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/albatross/context.py", line
418, in set_value
    parent = getattr(parent, elem)
AttributeError: Vars instance has no attribute 'openid'
    in al-input field "openid.assoc_handle"

I'm gonna patch the lib or something to make it work, but there should
be a sane way to cope with OpenID

Any help with tricks around this problem will be appreciated.

Cheers,
The Dod