Terry said:
Is unicode3.py something to run once or import in each app that wants unicode output? 

I say:
The latter... import it.

Terry said:
Either way, if it is possible to fix the console, why is it not distribute it with the fix?

I say:
Not sure what you are asking here. Yes it is possible to fix the console, but this fix depends on the version-specific internals of the Python IO system... so unicode3.py works with Python 3.1, but not Python 3.2 or 3.3.  I haven't tested to see if my patched unicode3.py still works on Python 3.1 (I imagine it would, due to the nature of the fix just adding something that Python 3.1 probably would ignore.

So my opinion is the fix is better done inside Python than inside the application.