> I have no idea what you mean by this.

I don't see how I can be clearer. What are the reasons for NOT implementing logging to file be unicode as a default? Logging to screen is unicode as a default. What are the reasons for not wanting consistency?

> A simple Internet search for "basicConfig encoding" yields for me as the second result this Stack Overflow question 

Indeed, and it was from that question I got my solution in fact. The problem was the 30-60 minutes I wasted before that trying to figure out why my program was crashing and why it was only crashing *sometimes*. I'd written the logging part of the program a year ago and not really touched it since, so the logging module being a possible culprit was not even in my mind when the program crashed.

> As my example illustrated, it's quite easy to log Unicode in log files.

Yes, things are easy when you know it's necessary. It's the process of discovery that's an unnecessary waste of people's time. That's why I raised this and that's why I would consider this a bug in my own software. It's inconsistent, it invites problems, and it wastes peoples time.