As an archivist i do a lot of partial mirrors and i find that httrack could
handle it better than it currently does. 
The are some issues that i think that doesnt make much sense.

1 - Redirects are accounted as depth: so this makes a mirror that tries to get
the 2 levels, get 1 page or none at all. There should be a way to specify a
"real depth". The problem is more critical in starting pages. (Newspapers and
stuff alike do that kind of stuff all the time, in my country that is)

2 - the --near respects the depth: sure it might be preferable is some cases,
but if one wants a partial mirror i think i'd like to see the images/etc that
are linked by it. It is true that a +*.<img_extension> or the new mimetype
filter could be used, but i dont think its very correct. Maybe a option to
allow or not to respect the depth could be applied?
3 - external URL's: dont know if this has been solved (since im using 3.33,
with urlhack), but starting with <http://<site>.com> and having some links with
<http://www.<site>.com> gets the www links as externals.
It happens mostly when they change the host and the URL starts to includes the
www.

Greetings,
Joao Luzio