[Python-Dev] [Py3k] curses module and libncursesw library

[Victor Stinner]

Hi,

Python2 and Python3 tries to link the Python _curses module to the libncusesw 
dynamic library, or fallback to libncurses (or another implementation). The 
problem of libncurses is that it doesn't support multibyte charsets like... 
utf-8. In the Python module, it's not possible to check if we are using 
libncursesw or libncurses.

Would it possible to change the Python3 configure script to always use 
libncursesw instead of falling back to an alternate non-unicode library? 
Which means no _curses module if libncursesw is missing.

Related bug: http://bugs.python.org/issue4787

It looks like libncursesw is available on Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X.

About (Open)Solaris, a libncurses package has been created in septembre 2008, 
but no unicode version yet. On Windows, there is a Cygwin port of libncurses, 
but I don't know if it contains the unicode version.

-- 
Victor Stinner aka haypo
http://www.haypocalc.com/blog/