adds encoding as a function parameter
when dealing with unicode strings, isinstance(u, basestring) will return True for either bytestrings or unicode strings. So, in order to allow unicode in the matplotlibrc, we need to use this typechecking rather than the former (which was type(s) is string )
Merge branch 'master' into unicode_rc
undid enccoding parameter. This can be added later if the encoding gets passed along with the file sometime.
unicode test runs
merged unicode solution
unicode test passes