Mark, first of all thanks for this and all the fixes to come.
Please use the bugtracker on the new site instead of the old sdm instance: https://openacs.org/bugtracker/openacs/. The sdm is only still online so that the old bugs can be moved over or fixed eventually.
The normal way how a patch finds its way into the cvs repository is when someone with cvs commit rights reviews and applies it (thanks to Jeff Davis for doing this regularly). This person would then set the bug to 'resolved', which you will be notified of automatically if you subscribe to the bugtracker. You can then check if that was done correctly and close the bug.
For this patch I would suggest to not define the " : " default another time (it is already defined in ad_context_bar_html), but rather declare -separator without a default value and do the call for ad_context_bar_html depending on [info exists separator] either with or without the option.
No idea where those weird characters come from - I would suppose that the patch command doesn't work with them so you'd rather try to get rid of that (maybe it doesn't happen when uploading to the new bugtracker).
