[New-bugs-announce] [issue44275] Is there a mojibake problem rendering interactive help in the REPL on Windows?

[Jesse Silverman]

New submission from Jesse Silverman <jessevsilverman at gmail.com>:

I didn't know whether to file this under DOCUMENTATION or WINDOWS.
I recently discovered the joys of the interactive help in the REPL, rather than just help(whatever).
I was exploring the topics and noticed multiple encoding or rendering errors.
I realized I stupidly wasn't using the Windows Terminal program but the default console.  I addressed that and they persisted in Windows Terminal.
I upgraded from 3.9.1 to 3.9.5...same deal.

I tried running:
Set-Item -Path Env:PYTHONUTF8 -Value 1

before starting the REPL, still no dice.

I confirmed this worked in the same session:
>>> ustr2='ʑʒʓʔʕʗʘʙʚʛʜʝʞ'
>>> ustr2
'ʑʒʓʔʕʗʘʙʚʛʜʝʞ'
It does.

The help stuff that doesn't render correctly is under topic COMPARISON:
lines 20, 21 and 25 of this output contain head-scratch-inducing mystery characters:
help> COMPARISON
Comparisons
***********

Unlike C, all comparison operations in Python have the same priority,
which is lower than that of any arithmetic, shifting or bitwise
operation.  Also unlike C, expressions like "a < b < c" have the
interpretation that is conventional in mathematics:

   comparison    ::= or_expr (comp_operator or_expr)*
   comp_operator ::= "<" | ">" | "==" | ">=" | "<=" | "!="
                     | "is" ["not"] | ["not"] "in"

Comparisons yield boolean values: "True" or "False".

Comparisons can be chained arbitrarily, e.g., "x < y <= z" is
equivalent to "x < y and y <= z", except that "y" is evaluated only
once (but in both cases "z" is not evaluated at all when "x < y" is
found to be false).

Formally, if *a*, *b*, *c*, …, *y*, *z* are expressions and *op1*,
*op2*, …, *opN* are comparison operators, then "a op1 b op2 c ... y
opN z" is equivalent to "a op1 b and b op2 c and ... y opN z", except
that each expression is evaluated at most once.

Note that "a op1 b op2 c" doesnΓÇÖt imply any kind of comparison between
*a* and *c*, so that, e.g., "x < y > z" is perfectly legal (though
perhaps not pretty).

That is: …, …, ’

em-dash or ellipsis might be involved somehow...maybe fancy apostrophe?
My current guess is that it isn't about rendering anymore, because something went awry further upstream?

Thanks!

----------
assignee: docs at python
components: Documentation
messages: 394817
nosy: docs at python, jessevsilverman
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Is there a mojibake problem rendering interactive help in the REPL on Windows?
type: behavior
versions: Python 3.9

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue44275>
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