This page is to make an impact analysis on the Django source to see what parts of it need what changes if we want to switch Django from using utf-8 bytestrings internally to fully use unicode strings internally.

Just a pin-down of things that spring to mind, all of them need more complete checking:

• database backends need to handle unicode vs. DATABASE_ENCODING translations
• special casing: the psycopg backend will need type handlers for string types (just as it already has type handlers for date/time types)
• the HTTPResponse sending machinery needs to do the unicode to DEFAULT_ENCODING translation
• internal usage of str() needs to be checked and supposedly changed over to unicode() usage
• debugging stuff needs to use repr() on strings, not str() (or use unicode() and let the HTTP response handling stuff handle the conversion - most debugging stuff is working with the response machinery anyway)
• mail sending functions need to do the right thing with the MIME type

Please either complete the above list or add headlines with more detailed discussions of the points above.