Cannot print greek letters in Python 2.6

[Terry Reedy]

On 11/28/2013 5:48 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 9:22 AM,  <mefistofelis at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have the following script however when the clipboard contents are
>> greek letters it fails to print them right. I have used all posible
>> encoding for greek letters including utf8 but to no avail so i just
>> stay with latin1.

When you use a 3rd patch module like 'win32clipboard', you should give a 
url for the source or doc. Were you using
http://docs.activestate.com/activepython/2.4/pywin32/win32clipboard.html

There are other programs on Pypi, such as pyclip.

> You need to know what encoding is actually being used. Attempting to
> decode using arbitrary encodings is doomed to failure. Possibly
> Windows is using some kind of global default encoding, or possibly
> you can query the other program for its encoding, but you're unlikely
> to succeed by pointing the decode gun in random directions and
> firing.

Searching "windows clipboard encoding" return pages such as
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1929812/how-does-cut-and-paste-affect-character-encoding-and-what-can-go-wrong
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms649015%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/sw/outwit/winclip.html

These suggest that there should be utf-8 and/or utf-16le versions of any 
text pasted.

http://docs.activestate.com/activepython/2.4/pywin32/win32clipboard__GetClipboardData_meth.html
say you could use
GetClipboardData(CF_UNICODETEXT)
which should reliably give you utf-16le.
I get the impression that CF_TEXT should be utf-8 but might not be.

EnumClipboardFormats
will let you see what is available.

> Incidentally, you may find things easier if you switch to Python 3.3
> - quite a bit of Unicode handling is improved in Py3.

At least use the *latest* version of 2.7 to get whatever unicode fixes 
that have been made to 2.x.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy