Seems that no simple solution exists, so for now, I will be using something like this:
class PoliteException(Exception): def __init__(self, e): self._e = e def __getattr__(self, name): return getattr(self._e, name) def __str__(self): if isinstance(self._e, PoliteException): return str(self._e) else: return '\n%s: %s, I am sorry!' % ( self._e.__class__.__name__, str(self._e)) try: unicode('\xe4') except Exception, e: raise PoliteException(e) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list