OK, I give up.

The problem is that one might test a program on terminal and think that 
everything is running OK and then spend a reasonable amount of time 
trying to find the problem later

Another approach: couldn't utf8 be set as default encoding for all 
inputs and outputs?

I know that some of my questions are caused by the fact that I do not 
understand how python works. But You have to bear in mind that most of 
the people don't. Such behaviour of Python (see also 
http://bugs.python.org/issue5092) is illogical in the "common sense" for 
standard poeple. If interpreter does something illogical for me, I am 
more eager to switch to another language.

Jerzy

Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> Martin v. Löwis <martin@v.loewis.de> added the comment:
>
> Using the terminal encoding for sys.stdout does not work in the general
> case, as a (background) process may not *have* a controlling terminal
> (such as a CGI script, a cron job, or a Windows service). That Python
> recognizes the terminal encoding is primarily a convenience feature for
> the interactive mode.
>
> Exposing sys.setdefaultencoding is not implementable in a reasonable way.
>
> ----------
> nosy: +loewis
>
> _______________________________________
> Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
> <http://bugs.python.org/issue6832>
> _______________________________________
>
>
>
>