Use gear Text interface

This makes the transition to python3 much smoother.

Change-Id: I9d8638dd98502bdd91cbe6caf3d94ce197f06c6f
Depends-On: If6bfc35d916cfb84d630af59f4fde4ccae5187d4
Depends-On: I93bfe33f898294f30a82c0a24a18a081f9752354
8 files changed