"Custom failure responses" in documentation

I am using version 2.4.2 on a WinXP box.  As a result, I am using a 
static instance (TCP port instead of a named pipe).

    FastCgiServer cgi-bin/rna_fcgi_handler.py -port 8081

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteRule ^/rna$ /cgi-bin/rna_fcgi_handler.py [PT]
    RewriteRule ^/rna/(.*) /cgi-bin/rna_fcgi_handler.py/$1 [PT]
   
    <LocationMatch "^/cgi-bin/rna_fcgi_handler\.py/[^/]+/client">
        AuthType Basic
        AuthName RNA_Client
        FastCgiAuthenticator cgi-bin/rna_fcgi_handler.py
        Require valid-user
    </LocationMatch>

The first bit effectively replaces "/rna" with 
"/cgi-bin/rna_fcgi_handler.py", passing the remaining bits as 
PATH_INFO.  If path_info matches "/*/client", then the same script is 
called first for the Authorizer phase.  The script itself distinguishes 
between Authorizer and Responder phases internally.

As you can see, I am attempting to use the FastCgiAuthenticator 
directive.  For the most part, it seems to work with one exception.  If 
I return a response that is not 200 or 403 (such as 404 or 500), the 
response is ignored and I get the authentication prompt again.  
According to the following documentation:

"All headers returned by a FastCGI authentication application in a 
successful response (Status: 200) are passed to sub-processes 
(CGI/FastCGI invocations) as environment variables. All headers returned 
in an unsuccessful response are passed on to the client."

I would have expected the error response to be returned.  But then there 
is the following documentation just below the prior bit:

"Custom failure responses from FastCGI authorizer applications are not 
(yet?) supported. See the ErrorDocument 
<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/core.html#errordocument> directive for 
a workaround (a FastCGI application can serve the document)."

I originally took the second bit to mean that if you returned a non-200 
response code that Apache would just serve up its default response for 
that code, which I could optionally override by using ErrorDocument.  
But now I am beginning to wonder if the use of ErrorDocument is the 
*only* way to return an error response.

Could someone clarify this for me?  And if non-200 responses are really 
supposed be going back to the client (and therefore ending the request), 
what could I be missing?

Thanks,
Seairth

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