try this on for size: Drop support for Py26.

.travis.yml

@@ -3,7 +3,6 @@ env:
   - REQUIREMENTS=true
   - REQUIREMENTS=false
 python:
-  - "2.6"
   - "2.7"
   - "3.2"
   - "3.3"

README.textile

@@ -43,4 +43,4 @@ h2. Usage
 
 h3. Notes:
 
-* Active development supports Python 2.6 or later (including Python 3.2+).
+* Active development supports Python 2.7 or later (including Python 3.2+).

setup.py

@@ -26,7 +26,6 @@ def get_version():
         'Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules',
         'Programming Language :: Python',
         'Programming Language :: Python :: 2',
-        'Programming Language :: Python :: 2.6',
         'Programming Language :: Python :: 2.7',
         'Programming Language :: Python :: 3',
         'Programming Language :: Python :: 3.2',
@@ -37,7 +36,6 @@ def get_version():
     keywords='textile,text,html markup',
     install_requires=['six',],
     extras_require={
-        ':python_version=="2.6"': ['ordereddict>=1.1'],
         'develop': ['regex', 'pytest', 'pytest-cov'],
     },
     setup_requires=['pytest-runner'],

textile/utils.py

@@ -60,21 +60,10 @@ def generate_tag(tag, content, attributes=None):
     # adding text by assigning it to element_tag.text.  That results in
     # non-ascii text being html-entity encoded.  Not bad, but not entirely
     # matching php-textile either.
-    try:
-        element_tag = [v.decode(enc) for v in ElementTree.tostringlist(element,
-            encoding=enc, method='html')]
-        element_tag.insert(len(element_tag) - 1, content)
-        element_text = ''.join(element_tag)
-    except AttributeError:
-        # Python 2.6 doesn't have the tostringlist method, so we have to treat
-        # it differently.
-        element_tag = ElementTree.tostring(element, encoding=enc)
-        element_text = re.sub(r"<\?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'\?>\n",
-                '', element_tag)
-        if content != six.text_type(' /'):
-            element_text = element_text.rstrip(' />')
-            element_text = six.text_type('{0}>{1}</{2}>').format(six.text_type(
-                element_text), content, tag)
+    element_tag = ElementTree.tostringlist(element, encoding=enc,
+            method='html')
+    element_tag.insert(len(element_tag) - 1, content)
+    element_text = ''.join(element_tag)
     return element_text
 
 def has_raw_text(text):