On Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:25:01 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote:
> Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch wrote:
>> On Mon, 01 Sep 2008 02:27:54 -0400, Terry Reedy wrote:
>>
>> Most likely because Python figured out that the terminal expects cp437.
>> What does `sys.stdout.encoding` say?
>
> The interpreter in the command prompt window says CP437. The IDLE Window
> says 'cp1252', and it handles the character fine. Given that Windows OS
> can handle the character, why is Python/Command Prompt limiting output?
The windows command prompt expects cp437 because that's what old DOS
programs print to it.
> Characters the IDLE window cannot display (like surrogate pairs) it
> displays as boxes. But if I cut '[][]' (4 chars) and paste into
> Firefox, I get 3 chars. '[]' where [] has some digits instead of being
> empty. It is really confusing when every window on 'unicode-based'
> Windows handles a different subset.
That's because it is not 'unicode-based'. Communication between those
programs has to be done with bytes, so the sender has to encode unicode
characters in the encoding the receiver expects.
> Is this the fault of Windows or of Python and IDLE (those two being
> more limited that FireFox)?
It's nobodies fault. That's simply how the encoding stuff works.
>>> To put it another way, how can one 'choose' utf-8 for display to
>>> screen?
>>
>> If the terminal expects cp437 then displaying utf-8 might give some
>> problems.
>
> My screen displays whatever Windows tells the graphics card to tell the
> screen to display.
But the terminal gets bytes and expects them to be cp437 encoded
characters and not utf-8. So you can't send whatever unicode character
you want, at least not without changing the encoding of the terminal.
> In OpenOffice, I can select a unicode font that displays at least
> everything in the BasicMultilingualPlane (BMP).
But OOo works with unicode internally, so there's no communication with
outside programs involved here.
Ciao,
Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch
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