Thanks for your insights. I have taken the easy way out, I read on a page that python 3 worked by default in UTF-8, so I downloaded and installed it.
Apart from a few surprises (print is not a funtion, and rules about mixing spaces and tabs in indentation are much more strict, and I guess more is to come :^) everything now works transparently. Thanks again. -- Fabrice DELENTE -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
