Well, it's not lost work as I get to understand how things work.
I wasn't aware of the gui options (oops), but I must file a bug because sometimes that settings are ignored completely. For example editing a password for a mysql user always requires strong passwords regardless of the gui setting.
Another problem is creating mail user: strong password is required on creation, but if the user is already there, then strong password is not enforced (i.e. the setting is respected).
This was why I modded it in the first place. On a closer examination, the default ispcp installation database is missing these values and they're inserted only when a "save" is done in the edit settings page. ouch... a little inconsistent but it works.
I have to redo my patch
ispcomm.