The error is the following:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<stdin>", line 4, in <module>
      File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/_xmlplus/sax/__init__.py", line 31, in parse
        parser.parse(filename_or_stream)
      File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/_xmlplus/sax/expatreader.py", line 109, in parse
        xmlreader.IncrementalParser.parse(self, source)
      File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/_xmlplus/sax/xmlreader.py", line 119, in parse
        self.prepareParser(source)
      File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/_xmlplus/sax/expatreader.py", line 121, in prepareParser
        self._parser.SetBase(source.getSystemId())
    UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe5' in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)

The following bash script can be used to reproduce the error:

    #!/bin/sh

    cat > å.timeline <<EOF
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    <timeline>
      <version>0.13.0devb38ace0a572b+</version>
      <categories>
      </categories>
      <events>
        <event>
          <start>2011-02-01 00:00:00</start>
          <end>2011-02-03 08:46:00</end>
          <text>asdsd</text>
        </event>
      </events>
      <view>
        <displayed_period>
          <start>2011-01-24 16:38:11</start>
          <end>2011-02-23 16:38:11</end>
        </displayed_period>
        <hidden_categories>
        </hidden_categories>
      </view>
    </timeline>
    EOF

    python <<EOF
    # encoding: utf-8
    from xml.sax import parse
    from xml.sax.handler import ContentHandler
    parse(open(u"å.timeline", 'r'), ContentHandler())
    EOF

If I instead do this, it works fine:

    parse(u"å.timeline".encode("utf-8"), ContentHandler())

Also:

    >>> sys.getfilesystemencoding()
    'UTF-8'

I heard from another user that this was not a problem with Python 3.1.2.

Confirmed about not being an issue in Python 3. Just checked with Python 3.3.0a0 and the example works fine - no exception raised.

However Python doesn't work with bytes filenames (I don't think this is a bug).

The proposed patch allows unicode filenames be used in SAX parser.

Ported tests for nonascii System-Id on 3.x.

If no one objects I'll commit this next week.

I don't think that the file system encoding is the correct answer here. AFAIR expat uses UTF-8 encoded strings. Python 3.x uses PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() with "s" which converts PyUnicode to PyBytes with the utf-8 codec.

Yes, this thing was doubted me too. I proceeded from the following considerations.

1. Often system id is used for file operations and in this case you need to use the file system encoding. Unfortunately Python 2 does not have 'surrogateescape' handler which would allow to encode arbitrary name and then restore and re-encode it for file operations.

2. Python 2 in contrary to Python 3 accepts bytes and they may not be valid UTF-8.

We have to choose between compatibility with Python 2 and Python 3. I chose the first, because it is more important for bugfix.

May be I am wrong.

Here is an alternative patch. It doesn't encode system id when it settled, instead system id attribute can be bytes or an unicode and encoding/decoding happened only a file opened.

New changeset d3e7aea8a550 by Serhiy Storchaka in branch '2.7':
Issue #11159: SAX parser now supports unicode file names.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/d3e7aea8a550

New changeset d2622ca8493a by Serhiy Storchaka in branch '3.2':
Issue #11159: Add tests for testing SAX parser support of non-ascii file names.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/d2622ca8493a

New changeset b85ba45b9579 by Serhiy Storchaka in branch '3.3':
Issue #11159: Add tests for testing SAX parser support of non-ascii file names.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/b85ba45b9579

New changeset 107a06f1a542 by Serhiy Storchaka in branch 'default':
Issue #11159: Add tests for testing SAX parser support of non-ascii file names.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/107a06f1a542

Fixed. Thank you for the report.

New changeset 706218e0facb by Serhiy Storchaka in branch '2.7':
Fix tests for issue #11159.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/706218e0facb

New changeset a7c074d9cbfb by Serhiy Storchaka in branch '3.2':
Fix tests for issue #11159.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/a7c074d9cbfb

New changeset 2bf01f03ff40 by Serhiy Storchaka in branch '3.3':
Fix tests for issue #11159.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/2bf01f03ff40

New changeset 4ab386b00aaf by Serhiy Storchaka in branch 'default':
Fix tests for issue #11159.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/4ab386b00aaf