null byte in the middle

function for initialization is no longer necessary

This reverts commit 1aa6c288.

The wb interface adds a null byte, so we were getting two of them. Going
back to the requirement that the caller of an encoder adds a null
byte, which means that the blob.encode() method must do so as well.

the generated .man.rst document.

distribution

with it)

except when the encoding is the empty string