Don't decode unicode strings.
This does not work with python2.3 and is probably not useful anyway with 2.4.
% init
% commit
adding base
% qnew mqbase
% qrefresh
% qdiff
diff -r 67e992f2c4f3 base
--- a/base
+++ b/base
@@ -1,1 +1,1 @@ base
-base
+patched
% qdiff dirname
diff -r 67e992f2c4f3 base
--- a/base
+++ b/base
@@ -1,1 +1,1 @@ base
-base
+patched