looks like this might not be needed ?

Author: ikirudennis

textile/core.py

@@ -985,10 +985,6 @@ def encode_url(self, url):
         Fixed version of the following code fragment from Stack Overflow:
             http://stackoverflow.com/a/804380/72656
         """
-        # turn string into unicode
-        if not isinstance(url, six.text_type):
-            url = url.decode('utf8')
-
         # parse it
         parsed = urlsplit(url)