Committed in revision 86530. Thanks Terry and Raymond for your comments.  I would like to keep this issue open (at a low priority) because the question in the titles is still relevant.  There are many new 3.x features that are not covered such as surrogateescape error handler.  Such topics may or may not be appropriate for a HOWTO.  there are also some stylistic changes that I would like to consider:

1. Replace verbatim URLs with properly formatted hyperlinked titles of the referenced resources.

2. I couldn't figure out who the original author was. With first person passages, such as "I remember looking at Apple ][ BASIC programs, .." it may be appropriate to list the original author at the top even if the text has been changed by others over the years.  At the very least the Acknowlegements section should start with "This article was originally written by X [on an occasion Y.]"

3. Examples should be properly marked up to allow sphinx to run them and check the output.