Index: docutils-0.8.1/docutils/frontend.py

===================================================================

--- docutils-0.8.1.orig/docutils/frontend.py

+++ docutils-0.8.1/docutils/frontend.py

@@ -33,6 +33,7 @@ import sys

 import warnings

 import ConfigParser as CP

 import codecs

+import locale

 import optparse

 from optparse import SUPPRESS_HELP

 import docutils

@@ -193,7 +194,36 @@ def make_paths_absolute(pathdict, keys,

                 value = make_one_path_absolute(base_path, value)

             pathdict[key] = value

+def _bytes_path_to_unicode(path):

+    '''Change a byte str path segment into unicode

+

+    Note that this is arguably wrong for Unix systems.  Unix filesystem paths

+    are bytes that programs interpret as characters.  Filesystem paths are in

+    no way guaranteed to be decodable into unicode.  So this could traceback

+    if the locale_encoding can't deal with any byte string and it could give

+    wrong values if the locale_encoding does not match the encoding of

+    a single one of the path component's values.

+

+    However, the rest of docutils is turning command line args containing

+    filenames into unicode so switching to unicode is more inline with the

+    strategy taken by the rest of docutils.

+    '''

+    # converting to Unicode (Python 3 does this automatically):

+    if sys.version_info < (3,0):

+        # TODO: make this failsafe and reversible

+        # locale.getpreferredencoding is not to be preferred to getlocale or

+        # getdefaultlocale but it is preferred to hardcoding a value.  We end

+        # with latin-1 because it's one of the encodings that is valid for

+        # every byte.

+        encoding = locale_encoding or locale.getpreferredencoding() or 'latin-1'

+        path = unicode(path, encoding)

+    return path

+

 def make_one_path_absolute(base_path, path):

+    if isinstance(base_path, unicode) and not isinstance(path, unicode):

+        path = _bytes_path_to_unicode(path)

+    elif isinstance(path, unicode) and not isinstance(base_path, unicode):

+        base_path = _bytes_path_to_unicode(base_path)

     return os.path.abspath(os.path.join(base_path, path))

 def filter_settings_spec(settings_spec, *exclude, **replace):