Installation Issue - Githubissues

flywire commented 9 years ago

"Different ways of how win_unicode_console can be used to fix a Python environment on Windows follow.

Python patch (recommended). Just call win_unicode_console.enable() in your sitecustomize or usercustomize module (see https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/appendix.html#the-customization-modules for more information). This will enable win_unicode_console on every run of the Python interpreter (unless site is disabled). Doing so should not break executed scripts in any way."

import site site.getusersitepackages()

This returned a path that did not exist. I created the path and sitecustomize.py file with a single line: win_unicode_console.enable()

I got an error so I changed it to the two lines: import win_unicode_console win_unicode_console.enable()

Please confirm correct installation and provide a simple validation test.

Running Win7-32

Drekin commented 9 years ago

Yes, that's a correct way to invoke win-unicode-console. The idea is that you want to call win_unicode_console.enable() automatically on every startup. A way to do this is to use sitecustomize or usercustomize. Of course if you want to access win_unicode_console module, you have to import it.

If you put the customizing script on a user-specific path, it's typically called usercustomize. You can also put sitecustomize to the global site-packages directory – Python/Lib/site-packages/.

An easy way to see whether win-unicode-console is active is to try to print some Unicode characters (that's why are you installing win-unicode-console in the first place) or to see what sys.stdout is.

flywire commented 9 years ago

Sorry, my communication has not been effective.

I am just an average moron not particularly interested in unicode characters but software that I want to use would not work. Assume I don't know what a unicode character is or how to call win_unicode_console.enable() (which is actually the case). Given that it will not work without the import line (which is not documented), I suggest that readme is changed so that that Usage, Python patch (recommended) reads: import win_unicode_console win_unicode_console.enable()

Can you provide a line in the readme that will attempt to print some unicode characters and describe success and failure?

Drekin commented 9 years ago

The readme is written for someone who knows Python, e.g. it should be clear that win_unicode_console.enable is a Python function and calling it means just calling the function, also it should be clear that win_unicode_console is a module, so if one wants to access it, he has to import it first. The usage desription focuces on the core idea – how to achieve that win_unicode_console.enable() gets called on every Python startup.

Maybe I should write a short text for beginners showing the problem and a solution on examples.

To solve your particular issue – what software are you using and what how exactly wouldn't it work? If you run Python interactive intepreter and type print(u"\u03b1"), what happens?

flywire commented 9 years ago

Well not everyone that can google is a python programmer so I think a beginners section would be really worthwhile. I was lucky to get a python programmer to take me through it.

Until the issues are sorted with the standard Python installation package we can only encourage windows users to use the win-unicode-console package. For that I thank you.