How to resolve hiccups by patch program?

[SF Markus Elfring <elfring at users dot sourceforge dot net>]

Hello,

I wish you a happy new year.

I have found the article "http://gnuarch.org/gnuarchwiki/Process_*.rej_files"; that references experiences by Miles Bader. I find his statement "Applying a hunk from diff-mode sometimes succeeds where patch failed." interesting in my case. Can Emacs perform an update really better than other usual tools in any special situations?

A couple of tools are mentioned on the page "http://cyberelk.net/tim/patchutils/";. It seems that I am looking for an option or feature that might not be available here so far.
Can a package of reject files be converted by an other program into another change set for a second try if anything went unexpectedly wrong? (Does this approach make sense?)
How much may I trust the applicability of patches that were generated by TortoiseSVN 1.4.1.7992 compared to other command line tools?

I ask because the technical details might be relevant for the open issue "Improve const-correctness" (http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=8160) with the Asterisk software. Would you like to share any more ideas for a solution to the observed obstacle?
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.subversion.tortoisesvn.user/5180

Regards,
Markus