def reset(self):

        """ Flushes and resets the codec buffers used for keeping state.

            Calling this method should ensure that the data on the
            output is put into a clean state, that allows appending
            of new fresh data without having to rescan the whole
            stream to recover state.

        """
        pass

This does not ensure that the stream is flushed, as the docstring promises.  I believe the following would work better.


    def reset(self):
        """ Flushes and resets the codec buffers used for keeping state.

            Calling this method should ensure that the data on the
            output is put into a clean state, that allows appending
            of new fresh data without having to rescan the whole
            stream to recover state.

        """
        if hasattr(self.stream, "flush"): self.stream.flush()