> _My_ locale is set properly.  The problem is all the other
> people in the world who do not have their locale set to match
> their files on disk; telling them each to fix it is tedious.
> But perhaps the OS is the best place to address that, when the
> incorrect locale is just accidental not unavoidable.

I fixed my locale back before my OS fully supported doing so.
It was painful, but it was *so* worth it.  There were many
tools that just worked better after I did that, and several
tools that I had to convince to use utf-8 through non-standard
means.

So I think Python is doing the right thing by using the locale
(the Standard Way), and that getting the OS vendors and/or
the users to fix their locale settings is indeed the right place
to fix this.