I think i should say this, in case someone else eventually has the same or similar issues:
1) I developped a bit the proxy.pac file. Now, it looks like this:
function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {
// forum.tinycore does not like tor:
if (shExpMatch(host, "forum.tinycorelinux.net") ) {
return "DIRECT";
// no proxy for internal net:
if (isInNet(host, "192.0.0.0", "255.255.248.0") ) {
return "DIRECT";
} else {
return "PROXY 127.0.0.1:8118";
}
}
It works, but once it changed to "DIRECT" it seems from now on, the proxy isn't used at all anymore. Since i suspected, that might be due to polipo naming the proxy "localhost:8118" (and not "127.0.0.1:8118" like most forwarding proxies do - and the tor socks proxy too (port: 9050) - i tried to change the else statement to "localhost" but the pac file still failed.
So in the end, i did FF > Settings > Advanced > Network a manual configuration and filled in several exceptions, among them forum.tinycore.net. And this indeed works. As long as you only use firefox (and no other browser), i think that is sufficient. Other apps you would like to "torify" you always could direct thru tor by torsocks or proxychains. IME (on other linux's) that's better than a systemwide proxy - at least on desktop computers - because with a systemwide socks proxy risks to break wget e.g.