title: How to make Robot Framework functions accept arguments as strings instead of the default unicode type
body: <p>I am writing a new RF library which are expected to take string arguments because the (pre-existing) Python library that I use is expecting strings, not unicode.
  Ofcourse I can convert each unicode to string before calling my existing function which supports only strings.</p>
  
  <pre><code>import ConfigParser
  
  class RFConfigParser:
  
  def get (self,section, option):
      print type (section) #prints unicode
      section = str (section) #works but I dont want to do this
      return self._config.get (section, option) #this pre-existing function expect a string input
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The problem is I have lots of similar functions and in each of these functions I will have to call this unicode to string conversion circus.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a straight forward way of doing this, so that the RF function will directly accept in string format </p>
  
  <p>Another question is the default unicode support a Robot Framework feature or a RIDE feature ? (I am using RIDE, is that why I am getting this problem)</p>