Hi! As discussed in a different thread, zope.publisher compatible decoding should be added to the ZPublisher. But does that code from zope.publisher make any sense? def _decode(self, text): """Try to decode the text using one of the available charsets.""" if self.charsets is None: envadapter = IUserPreferredCharsets(self) self.charsets = envadapter.getPreferredCharsets() or ['utf-8'] for charset in self.charsets: try: text = unicode(text, charset) break except UnicodeError: pass return text Using getPreferredCharsets()[0] is correct because zope.publisher uses the same charset for encoding responses. (For ZPublisher we decided we don't want to support charset negotiation.) But what about the other charsets? AFAICS - There are no tests in zope.publisher for that fallback behavior. - That fallback behavior doesn't cause trouble because it is very rarely or never used. - The fact no error is raised by unicode(text, charset) doesn't mean we have the right charset. Here some background information: http://chardet.feedparser.org/docs/index.html - Returning the encoded strings if all attempts fail might not be the best choice. Proposal: Just use unicode(text, charset, 'replace') with the same charset used for encoding responses. If there are no objections, I'll implement it that way in ZPublisher. What about zope.publisher? I don't use zope.publisher, but I think it should always use 'utf-8' instead of trying to be smart. Cheers, Yuppie