title: What is needed for curses in Python 3.4 on Windows7?
body: <p>I have a running Python 2.7/3.4 installation on my Windows 7 (x64) machine. I would like to test curses on Windows.</p>
  
  <p>Curses is installed but not working:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; import curses
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "&lt;stdin&gt;", line 1, in &lt;module&gt;
    File "C:\Tools\Python3.4.2\lib\curses\__init__.py", line 13, in &lt;module&gt;
      from _curses import *
  ImportError: No module named '_curses'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The <a href="https://docs.python.org/3/howto/curses.html" rel="noreferrer">documentation</a> says:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>The Windows version of Python doesn’t include the <a href="https://docs.python.org/3/library/curses.html#module-curses" rel="noreferrer">curses</a> module. A ported version called <a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/UniCurses" rel="noreferrer">UniCurses</a> is available.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>So, the Windows installer of Python 3.4 installed curses with unresolved dependencies. One could name this a bug...</p>
  
  <p>OK, I looked into UniCurses. It's a wrapper for <a href="http://pdcurses.sourceforge.net/" rel="noreferrer">PDCurses</a>:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>UniCurses is a wrapper for Python 2.x/3.x that provides a unified set of Curses functions on all platforms (MS Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X) with syntax close to that of the original NCurses. To provide the Curses functionality on Microsoft Windows systems it wraps <a href="http://pdcurses.sourceforge.net/" rel="noreferrer">PDCurses</a>.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Installing UniCurses via <code>pip3</code> results in an error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>C:\Users\Paebbels&gt;pip3 install UniCurses
  Downloading/unpacking UniCurses
    Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement UniCurses
    Some externally hosted files were ignored (use --allow-external UniCurses to allow).
  Cleaning up...
  No distributions at all found for UniCurses
  Storing debug log for failure in C:\Users\Paebbels\pip\pip.log
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The link to SourceForge on Python's UniCurses site is dead. A manual search an SourceForge helped to find <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/pyunicurses/?source=directory" rel="noreferrer">UniCurses for Python</a> again.</p>
  
  <p>But, the UniCurses 1.2 installer can not find any Python installation in my Windows registry. (Python 2.7.9 and Python 3.4.2 are available).</p>
  
  <p>I also looked into Public Domain Curses (PDCurses). PD Cureses 3.4 is from late 2008. So it's 7 years old. I don't believe it will work either with Windows 7 nor Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Is there any way to get curses running on Windows with Python.</strong></p>
  
  <p>(The Windows Python, not the CygWin Python!)</p>