The problem seems to have vanished with python-2.5, and unicode_start(1).
tree645d51e3c0c3d7e5381a16b066a6b6bb94432437
-rw-r--r-- 19 .hgignore
drwxr-xr-x - core
-rwxr-xr-x 1574 pysize.py
drwxr-xr-x - ui