preferred way to set encoding for print

[Mark Tolonen]

"_wolf" <wolfgang.lipp at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:22991c72-d00f-45cd-9bf7-0b80fc4319bd at k26g2000vbp.googlegroups.com...
> hi folks,
>
> i am doing my first steps in the wonderful world of python 3.
>
> some things are good.
> some things have to be relearned.
> some things drive me crazy.
>
> sadly, i'm working on a windows box. which, in germany, entails that
> python thinks it to be a good idea to take cp1252 as the default
> encoding.
>
> so just coz i got my box in germany means i can never print out a
> chinese character? say what?
>
> i have no troubles with people configuring their python installation
> to use any encoding in the world, but wouldn't it have been less of a
> surprise to just assume utf-8 for any file in/output? after all, it is
> already the default for python source files as far as i understand.
> someone might think they're clever to sniff into the system and make
> the somehwat educated guess that this dude's using cp1252 for his
> files. but they would be wrong.
>
> so: how can i tell python, in a configuration or using a setting in
> sitecustomize.py, or similar, to use utf-8 as a default encoding?
> there used to be a trick to say `reload(sys);sys.setdefaultencoding
> ('utf-8')`, but that has no effect in py3.0.1. also, i cannot set
> `sys.stdout.encoding`; is there a way to re-open that stream with a
> different encoding?
>
> in all, i believe it is quite unsettling to me to see that, on my py3
> installation,
>
> sys.getdefaultencoding() == 'utf-8'
> sys.stdout.encoding == 'cp1252'
> locale.getlocale() == (None, None)
> locale.getdefaultlocale() == ('de_DE', 'cp1252')
>
> which to me makes as much sense as a blackcurrant tart thrown into
> space. worse,
>
> locale.setlocale( locale.LC_ALL, locale.getdefaultlocale() )
>
> results in
>
> locale.Error: unsupported locale setting
>
> this bloody thing doesn't accept its *own* output. attempts to feed
> that locale beast with anything but the empty string or 'C' were all
> doomed. it would take a very patient and eloquent person to explain
> that in a credible fashion to me. my word for this is, 'broken'.
>
> i would very much like to rid myself of these considerations. just say
> it's all utf-8, wash'n'go.
>
> my attempts of changing python's mind using the locale module have
> failed so far. otherwise, i for one don't want to touch that locale
> thing with a very long pole. as far as i can see, it does not work as
> documented. the platform dependencies are also a clear OFF LIMITS sign
> to me.
>
> any suggestions?

What specifically do you want to do?  I work with Chinese all the time on a 
U.S. Windows system.  Do you want to print Chinese characters in a console 
window?  In a Python IDE?  FYI, I don't use the locale module for much at 
all.

I can't type or print Chinese to a console window unless I change Control 
Panel, Regional and Language Options, Advanced Tab, Language for non-Unicode 
Programs to a Chinese selection (and reboot).  Then the default 
sys.stdout.encoding is something like cp936.

The Pythonwin IDE in the latest version of pywin32, however, supports UTF-8 
in its interactive window and displays Chinese fine.

Setting PYTHONIOENCODING overrides the encoding used for stdin/stdout/stderr 
(See the Python help for details), but if your terminal doesn't support the 
encoding that won't help.

Let me know what you're trying to do.

-Mark