æøå ÆØÅ Python in Notepad++ with NppExec Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish and the Faroe Islands

Kay Haldor Øvredal Gjuvsland

So i’ve scoured the internett trying to figure out how to get æøå to work with python in Notepad++ without any luck. There is several answers out there but they re just way to advanced for me to understand. So i’ve been playing around in NPP for a while now and i finally figured it out!

Im writing this post just so i can my self find the answer later down the line and hopefully help others with the same problem.

The solution was ridiculously easy.

The following is a working solution as off writing this post with Notepad++ version 8.7.1 (64-bit) installed on Windows 10 with Python version 3.12

In NPP go to “Plugins” and hover the mouse over “NppExec” and press “Console Output…{OEM/OEM}”. Change both sides (Input and Output) to ASCI (Windows). And there you go! It should work now :)

Just in case ill add that i’ve set Encoding to UTF-8

Ill add sone diffrent words so the search engine will find this post easier.

æøå ÆØÅ æ ø å Æ Ø Å Norsk Dansk Islandsk Færøysk Norwegian Icelandish Faroese Norge Danmark Island the Færøyene Norway Iceland Denmark the Faroe Islands

Getting NPP with Python through NppExec to print æ ø å Æ Ø Å

Vitalii Dovgan

The “Python and UTF-8” section here seems to be related:
https://d0vgan.github.io/nppexec/?q=4.6.4

PeterJones

@Kay-Haldor-Øvredal-Gjuvsland ,

Another option is to set that Console Output… dialog to UTF-8 for both input and output,

… and to use python3’s -X utf8 command-line argument.

By adding a \u236a-encoded smiley, you can see better that without that -X, python is applying heuristics to determine what encoding to use when printing; and the NppExec environment is capturing the STDOUT/STDERR from anything executed in its Console, so the heuristics don’t necessarily come to the right conclusion.

Here are some screenshots in OEM/OEM, ANSI/ANSI, and UTF8/UTF8:

python -c "print('æøå')"
python -c "print('æøå\u263a')"
python -X utf8 -c "print('æøå\u263a')"

OEM
ANSI
UTF-8

The error message for the python -c "print('æøå\u263a')" shows that Python3 is trying to use the charmap codec, which is what it uses when it’s using one of the ANSI-style codepage/character-map-encodings rather than a full unicode encoding like UTF-8.

Thus, without forcing python3 to correctly use UTF-8 output in the NppExec environment, you have to tell NppExec that it needs to interpret the output from python as your ANSI codepage.

… Looking at @Vitalii-Dovgan’s link, an alternative to using the -X utf8 and choosing UTF8/UTF8 in the plugin menu, is to set the environment variable and the npe_console as shown (the npe_console given is equivalent to setting UTF-8/UTF-8 in the plugin menu, but just for the active script).

Kay Haldor Øvredal Gjuvsland

@PeterJones Very nice! I’ve been looking for a post like this for the last 6 months without luck. all though its only like 2-3 hours like 5 times over the last 6 months :P I wish these posts would’ve shown up when i tried searching >.< But as i said i do not want to have to write any code every time i wish to use æøå since we use these letters a lot in my country. So I’m happy i finally found the solution to just set it and would just always work :)

Btw i tested setting it to UTF-8 in the menu you posted and it did not work. It gave me �� instead of the µ°Õ ãÏ┼ that OEM (DOS) gives :P But ANSI (Windows) works perfectly :)

I also posted this post on Stackoverflow’s forum but it got instantly moved to “Off topic” :P But as long as it shows up in google then I’m happy!

Kay Haldor Øvredal Gjuvsland

@Vitalii-Dovgan Thank you very much for the link!

Looking at the document makes me realize that I’ve tried a lot of these and never got it to work. Also it is just way too advanced for little old noobster me :P

I was just looking for an simple press of a button in order to fix this indefinitely without issue. And I am pretty happy that I’ve finally found the solution xD

And will you look at that! Searching google for “notepad++ how to get æøå in npp_exec python” and this post comes up as the very first search :D

PeterJones

@Kay-Haldor-Øvredal-Gjuvsland said in æøå ÆØÅ Python in Notepad++ with NppExec Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish and the Faroe Islands:

Btw i tested setting it to UTF-8 in the menu you posted and it did not work. It gave me �� instead of the µ°Õ ãÏ┼ that OEM (DOS) gives :P But ANSI (Windows) works perfectly :)

As I said, if you have NppExec set to UTF-8, you must also ensure that python is outputting UTF-8 when it’s running. Just setting the UTF-8 option in NppExec is not sufficient if python is not configured to output UTF-8. You can do this with either the -X utf8 command line option passed to the python.exe, or by setting the environment variable that’s in the document @Vitalii-Dovgan linked to.

I literally showed you a screenshot where it showed the � vs the right output, and what the command looked like that did each, so I am quite confident it works.