configure PuTTY

What to do when the dialogs are garbled

This is what the dialog should look like:

This is what the dialog looks like right now:

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 simply doesn't switch to that alternate character set, resulting in garbled dialogs.

Solutions

There are at least 3 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"
2. Configure ncurses
   • Tell ncurses 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