configure PuTTY

What to do when the dialogs are garbled

This is what the dialog looks like right now:

This is what the dialog should look like:

Cause

The tool dialog is using ncurses. This tool uses different character sets to build the "GUI". When connecting with PuTTY in it's default configuration, ncurses switches to an alternate character set, resulting in garbled dialogs.

Solutions

There are at least 2 solutions:

1. Configure PuTTY

   • Tell PuTTY to connect with it's own Terminal-type string
   • Window -> Translation -> Remote character set: UTF-8
   • Connections -> Data -> Terminal-type string = "putty"
   • Don't forget to save these changes in your PuTTY session

2. Configure ncurses

   • Tell ncurses not to switch to the alternate character set for the active session:

   export NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS=1

   • Make BaSh always do this when you connect:

   echo export NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS=1 >> ~/.bashrc