Some maintainers for different linux distribution are having some
problems with the encoding on different python versions. This change
intents to make all python files define explicitly the encoding, license
and unix line separators. Remove one example of the README.rst file
where a possible non UTF-8 character is used.
Punt string handling to python Decimal object, this correctly represents both
integers and floats (except with regards to trailing zeros)
Change command line tests to reflect handling of ints
