Unicode string works in web based Python shell but not on desktop?

[daddydave]

Any idea why I can create a Unicode string in the Python shell on a Silverlight-based Python on the web but not in IDLE or any other Python shell on my desktop? I am using Google IME to type in both cases.

[mahesh2k]

I am using Python 2.7.3 on Ubuntu 12.04 Precise and it seems to be working for me. I guess it could be windows issue. I used google transliterate for the string.

[daddydave]

Found the fix and it works.
I notice the indentation is screwed up in stackoverflow -- I put the encoding = 'utf-8' line in line with the try and except preceding it.
This seems to have something to do with the Windows default encoding for stdout not being UTF-8.

Code: (python)

encoding = "ascii"
if sys.platform == 'win32':
    # On Windows, we could use "mbcs". However, to give the user
    # a portable encoding name, we need to find the code page
    try:
        encoding = locale.getdefaultlocale()[1]
        codecs.lookup(encoding)
    except LookupError:
        pass
    encoding = 'utf-8'