Getting the encoding of sys.stdout and sys.stdin, and changing it properly

[velle]

I have been studying your reply for many hours now, trying to figure it
all out. I am novice in many respects; eg. I did not know neither
Locale, the command locale, nl_langinfo(), hexdump, that ctrl+d is EOF,
etc. :-)

However I have found a way that solves my original problem, and I will
post solutions/explanations to this thread within this week, as soon as
I feel that the concepts have fallen into place in my head.

Thanks, velle