> is there a means to configure Python such that I > can enter string constants in latin1-encoding? Do you mean this? http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html More info: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0100.html http://www.reportlab.com/i18n/python_unicode_tutorial.html German only: http://p-nand-q.com/e/unicode-faq-de.html -- Gruß - regards Klaus :-)