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The reload(sys) bid is a good idea, thanks.

Anyway, I can't fix XIST, because it it complicated as heck
and I don't really have time to do that. Also I'm not sure,
it this is really due to a fault in XIST or some side-effect
I can't fathom.

ORM is not touched by the encoding problem itself, it's in
the data model modules. Each and every Unicode column needs
a appEncoding= parameter on definition. That's not a
technical problem, though, it's just plain ugly. (This might
go away in the mid-run, because I'll re-implement parts of
orm and I can put unicode support on the todo list. But
until then...;-)