This encoder is used to handle input from HH conversion, which needs to
end up as UTF-8 in the database. Switch the open-coded routine from
Database.py to this common routine so all encodings now take place in
the same file.
It seems that running encoder.encode() on a latin1/latin9 string results
in, yes a bloody UnicodeDecodeError. Decode error on .encode()...
Really. This way the modification from non-unicode string to real
unicode appears to work better.
