Control characters are named control characters because they are control the output device. Different devices have different capabilities and reacts different on the same codes. Windows console, different sorts of Linux terminals and Tk text widget are different devices. Some prints funny characters, others not, some beeps, others not, some interprets particular flavor of ESC sequences, others not, some allows color and positioning, others not. Python can't unify the behavior of these devices without lost most of functionality as it can't unify the behavior of black-white matrix printer, graphical plotter and 24-bit color LCD monitor.

I would close this issue as not related to Python.