python-markdown 1.4.2 (in 7.10) does not support unicode strings

[Zeke Harris]

Binary package hint: python-markdown

Reproduction:
Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Oct 5 2007, 13:50:07)
[GCC 4.1.3 20070929 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.2-16ubuntu2)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> unicode = u'Unicode text string'
>>> unicode
u'Unicode text string'
>>> import markdown
>>> markdown.markdown(unicode)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/markdown.py", line 1484, in markdown
    return str(Markdown(text))
  File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/markdown.py", line 1249, in __str__
    doc = self._transform()
  File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/markdown.py", line 892, in _transform
    self._processSection(self.top_element, self.lines)
  File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/markdown.py", line 998, in _processSection
    el.appendChild(item)
  File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/markdown.py", line 161, in appendChild
    child.parent = self
AttributeError: 'unicode' object has no attribute 'parent'

Package information:
Package: python-markdown
Priority: optional
Section: universe/python
Installed-Size: 124
Maintainer: Debian Python Modules Team <email address hidden>
Architecture: all
Version: 1.4-2
Depends: python (>= 2.3), python-support (>= 0.2)
Filename: pool/universe/p/python-markdown/python-markdown_1.4-2_all.deb
Size: 18876
MD5sum: dd18403b777d4971516e894dbafb3cf7
SHA1: 8ecf0107eafad311e0196e9c8926a0c6b77537d6
SHA256: 31840738048540332573d1c5e7ec67744346c25cf9107e8da56115de118aef0e
Description: text-to-HTML conversion library/tool
 Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown
 allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text
 format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).
 .
 This is a Python implementation of John Gruber's Markdown. The current
 version of python-markdown implements all Markdown syntax features and
 fully passes Markdown Test Suite 1.0. It also supports footnotes and
 attributes.
 .
  Homepage: http://www.freewisdom.org/projects/python-markdown/
Python-Version: all
Bugs: mailto:<email address hidden>
Origin: Ubuntu

Ubuntu Version:
7.10 fully updated as of 11/29/07

Additional Information:
The version of python-markdown included in Ubuntu 7.10 is more than a year old. According to the website referred to in the package information, python-markdown 1.4 was released on March 24, 2006. Unicode support was added sometime after version 1.5, on July 10, 2006. The current release is 1.6b, which was released on August 18, 2007.