If I want to preserve key names in a config file, I must add configparser.optionxform = str. I was surprised by this (configparser) behaviour, expecting case-preservation to be the default (if not the only) option.
Does this make sense to you? What's the rationale behind this decision?
This only affects the case of the option names, the case of values is always preserved. It can be argued, whether this is a sane choice, but the choice has been made and must now be followed in order to maintain compatibility with old sources.
I don't see any big problem, since you obviously found a workaround for yourself. You might alternatively try configobj. It is powerful, has a much more convenient and reasonable API and does by default preserve case of options.