How to use 8bit character sets?

["Martin v. Löwis"]

copx wrote:
> For some reason Python (on Windows) doesn't use the system's default 
> character set and that's a serious problem for me.

I very much doubt this statement: Python does "use" the system's default
character set on Windows. What makes you think it doesn't?

> Is it possible to tell Python to use an 8bit charset (latin-1 in my case) 
> for textfile and string processing by default?

That is the default.

Regards,
Martin