Define UFOReader._checkForFile as an alias of os.path.exists

Maybe we should rather replace it with os.path.exists, as this
would make the code easier to read. Also os.path.exists is already
used very often in ufoLib.__init__
Add additional location for xmlWriter

Analogous to https://github.com/benkiel/robofab/commit/42b7d1239eb93a1e7cc93f2fffda146cddd3e772
by @benkiel
Refactor and fix wrong usage of UFOReader._readPlist

All cases where UFOReader._readPlist was used suffered
from calling it with the fully constructed path where
it expected just the relative path/fileName of the plist.

Also, all cases had the similiar pattern of checking if
the file exists before trying to read it.

This replaces that pattern by `_getPlist`. The method has
a `default` argument that acts similar to the `default`
argument of the builtin function `getattr` i.e. when
`default is None` the requested plist is mandatory.