Umlauts, encodings, sitecustomize.py

[F. GEIGER]

I'm on WinXP, Python 2.3.

I don't have problems with umlauts (ä, ö, ü and their uppercase instances)
in my wxPython-GUIs, when displayed as static texts. But when filling
controls with text containing umlauts, or in the Python console, or when
writing to files umlauts are escaped:

Python 2.3.4 (#53, May 25 2004, 21:17:02) [MSC v.1200 32 bit (Intel)] on
win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> "ä"
'\x84'
>>>

I have defined a sitecustomize.py with these lines in it

import sys
sys.setdefaultencoding("iso-8859-1")

What else do I have to adjust?

Kind regards
Franz GEIGER