[Python-ideas] Fix default encodings on Windows

[Brett Cannon]

On Wed, 10 Aug 2016 at 11:16 Steve Dower <steve.dower at python.org> wrote:

> [SNIP]
>
> Finally, the encoding of stdin, stdout and stderr are currently
> (correctly) inferred from the encoding of the console window that Python
> is attached to. However, this is typically a codepage that is different
> from the system codepage (i.e. it's not mbcs) and is almost certainly
> not Unicode. If users are starting Python from a console, they can use
> "chcp 65001" first to switch to UTF-8, and then *most* functionality
> works (input() has some issues, but those can be fixed with a slight
> rewrite and possibly breaking readline hooks).
>
> It is also possible for Python to change the current console encoding to
> be UTF-8 on initialize and change it back on finalize. (This would leave
> the console in an unexpected state if Python segfaults, but console
> encoding is probably the least of anyone's worries at that point.) So
> I'm proposing actively changing the current console to be Unicode while
> Python is running, and hence sys.std[in|out|err] will default to utf-8.
>
> So that's a broad range of changes, and I have little hope of figuring
> out all the possible issues, back-compat risks, and flow-on effects on
> my own. Please let me know (either on-list or off-list) how a change
> like this would affect your projects, either positively or negatively,
> and whether you have any specific experience with these changes/fixes
> and think they should be approached differently.
>
>
> To summarise the proposals (remembering that these would only affect
> Python 3.6 on Windows):
>
> [SNIP]
> * force the console encoding to UTF-8 on initialize and revert on finalize
>

Don't have enough Windows experience to comment on the other parts of this
proposal, but for the console encoding I am a hearty +1 as I'm tired of
Unicode characters failing to show up in the REPL.
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