Thanks for the bug report. I've fixed this upstream: https://github.com/takluyver/pyxdg/commit/7a6e107db8d5be45c6b0d06d8092b6e7fec82449
I think I had over-eagerly implemented the latest version of the spec, which says that .desktop files are UTF-8, without looking at the history of it. Best wishes, Thomas
