Windows XP unicode and escape sequences

I mainly work on OS X, but thought I'd experiment with some Python code on XP. The
problem is I can't seem to get these things to work at all.

First of all, I'd like to use Greek letters in the command prompt window, so I was going to
use unicode to do this. But in the command prompt, the unicode characters are displaying
as strange looking characters. I tried installing the 'Bitstream Vera Sans Mono' font in hopes
it had all the characters I needed but this didn't seem to work either. Is the problem the font?
And if so, is there a certain font that has unicode '03B1', etc? Here's some code I tried:

v = u'\u03B1\u03B2\ u03B3'.encode(' utf-8')
print v #just displays squares

The next problem I'm having is I can't seem to color the text with ansi escape sequences. I
added "device=%System Root%\system32\ ansi.sys" to the bottom of the CONFIG.NT file, and experimented with code like this:

print chr(27) + "[36mTest" + chr(27) + "[0m"

>From what I found on-line, ascii character 27 seems to be the escape key I need, but I can't

seem to get it to work. It just displays an arrow.

If anyone has any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks!

Jay

[John Roth]

On Dec 12, 2:51 pm, <[e-mail] .comwrote:

I mainly work on OS X, but thought I'd experiment with some Python code on XP. The
problem is I can't seem to get these things to work at all.

First of all, I'd like to use Greek letters in the command prompt window, so I was going to
use unicode to do this. But in the command prompt, the unicode characters are displaying
as strange looking characters. I tried installing the 'Bitstream Vera Sans Mono' font in hopes
it had all the characters I needed but this didn't seem to work either. Is the problem the font?
And if so, is there a certain font that has unicode '03B1', etc? Here's some code I tried:

v = u'\u03B1\u03B2\ u03B3'.encode(' utf-8')
print v #just displays squares

You've got two problems. First, you don't need to encode it; if the
command prompt window displayed your output after encoding it would
display the multi-byte form of your characters. You should just send
it a unicode object.

Second, check the .encoding attribute of the sys.stdout object.
Therein lies enlightenment about what the command prompt window will
accept.

No info on your other problem.

John Roth

>
If anyone has any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks!

Jay

[Tim Roberts]

<jy******@kc.rr .comwrote:

>I mainly work on OS X, but thought I'd experiment with some Python code on XP. The
problem is I can't seem to get these things to work at all.

First of all, I'd like to use Greek letters in the command prompt window, so I was going to
use unicode to do this. But in the command prompt, the unicode characters are displaying
as strange looking characters. I tried installing the 'Bitstream Vera Sans Mono' font in hopes
it had all the characters I needed but this didn't seem to work either. Is the problem the font?
And if so, is there a certain font that has unicode '03B1', etc? Here's some code I tried:

It's not the font. (OK, it's partially the font.) To display Greek
characters to the console, your console session has to be set for a code
page that includes Greek characters.

>The next problem I'm having is I can't seem to color the text with ansi escape sequences. I
added "device=%System Root%\system32\ ansi.sys" to the bottom of the CONFIG.NT file, and experimented with code like this:

print chr(27) + "[36mTest" + chr(27) + "[0m"

From what I found on-line, ascii character 27 seems to be the escape key I need, but I can't
seem to get it to work. It just displays an arrow.

CONFIG.NT only affects 16-bit programs running in the NTVDM (the Virtual
DOS Machine).

32-bit console apps (which Python is) simply cannot use ANSI escape
sequences. You have to use the Win32 APIs to do color. There are
curses-like libraries available for Python. Or:

http://www.effbot.org/zone/console-handbook.htm
--
Tim Roberts, ti**@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.