I'd like to put the following PEP up for pronouncement. Walter is currently on vacation, but he asked me to already go ahead with the process. http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0293.html I like the patch a lot and the implementation strategy is very interesting as well (just wish that classes were new types -- then things could run a tad faster and the patch would be simpler). The basic idea of the patch is to provide a way to elegantly handle error situations in codecs which go beyond the standard cases 'ignore', 'replace' and 'strict', e.g. to automagically escape problem case, to log errors for later review or to fetch additional information for the proper handling at coding time (for example, fetching entity definitions from a URL). Thanks, -- Marc-Andre Lemburg CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH _______________________________________________________________________ eGenix.com -- Makers of the Python mx Extensions: mxDateTime,mxODBC,... Python Consulting: http://www.egenix.com/ Python Software: http://www.egenix.com/files/python/