Fix `LANG=C alot` with custom bindings.

Reproduction steps:
- Set a custom binding in your config file. E.g.:
[bindings]
    S = toggletags spam
- start alot with LANG=C: LANG=C alot
- variant A: type ö
- variant B: type :search ö

Problem: the urwid encoding is set to 'narrow', such that all key events
are passed down as `str`, not `unicode`. At the same time, ConfigObj reads
the custom binding as a unicode string. The interaction of both leads to
crashes.

Related to #673

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/alot/ui.py b/alot/ui.py
index f82feda4..3bb30ada 100644
--- a/alot/ui.py
+++ b/alot/ui.py
@@ -75,6 +75,9 @@ class UI(object):
         # alarm handle for callback that clears input queue (to cancel alarm)
         self._alarm = None
 
+        # force urwid to pass key events as unicode, independent of LANG
+        urwid.set_encoding('utf-8')
+
         # create root widget
         global_att = settings.get_theming_attribute('global', 'body')
         mainframe = urwid.Frame(urwid.SolidFill())