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curses.textpad should support UTF-8 unicode characters #133031
Description
Feature or enhancement
Proposal:
curses.textpad does not support UTF-8/Unicode characters, they are silently ignored when editing.
It would be useful to add support for Unicode characters.
Minimal reproducible code: Type š into the editing textbox and observe nothing happens.
import curses.textpad
import atexit
atexit.register(curses.endwin)
w = curses.initscr()
curses.noecho()
curses.textpad.Textbox(w).edit()Has this already been discussed elsewhere?
This is a minor feature, which does not need previous discussion elsewhere
Links to previous discussion of this feature:
No response
Linked PRs
- gh-133031: Support non-ASCII characters in curses.textpad.Textbox #152451
- [3.15] gh-133031: Support non-ASCII characters in curses.textpad.Textbox (GH-152451) #152467
- [3.14] gh-133031: Support non-ASCII characters in curses.textpad.Textbox (GH-152451) #152468
- [3.13] gh-133031: Support non-ASCII characters in curses.textpad.Textbox (GH-152451) #152469
- gh-133031: Support the full Unicode range in curses.textpad.Textbox #152482
- gh-133031: Fix test_textbox_edit_wide on a narrow build #152592
- gh-133031: Fix test_textbox_unicode on a narrow build #152750
Activity
donbarbos commented on Apr 27, 2025
sounds like good idea. would you like to submit a PR yourself?
(I'm not a core dev, I'm asking because I'm also interested in the task)
cc @Yhg1s as curses expert
gh-133031: Support non-ASCII characters in curses.textpad.Textbox (GH…
gh-133031: Support the full Unicode range in curses.textpad.Textbox (G…
serhiy-storchaka commented on Jun 29, 2026
Implemented. curses.textpad.Textbox now accepts non-ASCII characters from 8-bit locales (#152451), backported to 3.13, 3.14 and 3.15. Full Unicode support, including combining characters (#152482), relies on functions added only in 3.16 and is therefore available in 3.16+ only.
Thanks @sijanec for the report!
[3.14] gh-133031: Support non-ASCII characters in curses.textpad.Text…
[3.13] gh-133031: Support non-ASCII characters in curses.textpad.Text…
[3.15] gh-133031: Support non-ASCII characters in curses.textpad.Text…
gh-133031: Fix test_textbox_edit_wide on a narrow build (GH-152592)
gh-133031: Fix test_textbox_unicode on a narrow build (GH-152750)