Isn't python supposed to work with latin characters?

Question

My end goal is to simplify a text into purely words from one text file to a new one. However it is in french and uses latin chracaters like é, ç or ù. However my code only changes them into a space while it works with ascii characters.

fro example it takes "Messieurs les Présidents," and changes it to "messieurs les pr sidents"

def convert():
    for i in files_names:
        f1 = open(f"speeches/{i}","r")
        L = f1.readlines()
        cleaned_text=" "
        for j in L:
            for k in j :
                if ord(k)>=65 and ord(k)<=90: #Changing to lower case
                    f=chr(ord(k)+32)
                    cleaned_text+=f
                elif (ord(k)>=97 and ord(k)<=122): #keeping lower case letters
                    cleaned_text+=k
                elif (ord(k)>=224 and ord(k)<=254): #keeping lower case latins
                    cleaned_text+=k
                    print(k)
                else:
                    if cleaned_text[-1]!=" ":
                        cleaned_text+=" "
        f1.close()
        f2 = open(f"./cleaned/{i}","w")
        for i in cleaned_text[1:]:
            f2.write(i)
        f2.close()

this is what my code looks like, I added a seperate if statement to print any entries in the latin case but there are none.

Answer 1

In the end the problem wasn't with python since it is based in UTF-8. It was with the os import that doesn't open files in UTF-8 automatically and had to be told. Here's the fixed and cleaned up code for anyone who's looking to have a little fun.

def convert():
for i in files_names: #here the file names were extracted outside of the function
    f1 = open(f"............../{i}","r", encoding="utf-8") #enter the name of your directory
    start_text = f1.readlines()
    cleaned_text=" "
    for lines in start_text:
        for letters in lines.lower() :
            if letters in "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzüéâäåçêëèïîìôöòûùÿáíóúñà":
                cleaned_text+=letters
            else:
                if cleaned_text[-1]!=" ": #only adding a space if there isn't one already
                    cleaned_text+=" "
    f1.close()
    f2 = open(f"./................./{i}","w", encoding='utf-8') #enter the name of your new directory
    f2.write(cleaned_text)
    f2.close()