Correct Putty configuration for Ubuntu 9.04

Question

I often use Putty (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/) to connect to Ubuntu boxes (9.04 now). It works well, but I can't figure out the correct combination of Putty font, character encoding, character translation, and terminal configuration on the Ubuntu end so that the terminal displays everything correctly. The problem is most obvious when running an ncurses program such as "screen-profiles" or "w3m". The box drawing characters are messed up.

Has anyone got this combination working to their satisfaction?

Answer 1

Try exporting the following environment variable

export NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS=1

That stops ncurses using the VT100 "Alternate character set" line drawing characters in a UTF-8 locale, and makes it use the Unicode box-drawing characters instead.

Answer 2

The best I've been able to come up with is to change the putty configuration in Window/Translation to UTF-8 and the font in Window/Appearance to Lucida Console.

It gets most of the characters correct. In "aptitude" the menus are correctly outlined in line drawing characters, but not the "Are you sure you wish to exit" pop up dialog. Running a command like "man ls" now shows most of the characters correctly, but hyphenated words end up with a box replacing the hyphen.

It's good enough for programming in Emacs, anyway. Better solutions appreciated.

Answer 3

Putty (or enchanced fork Kitty) appernetly both don't honor the request to swtich to VT100 style line drawing mode when in 'UTF-8' for example in aptitude - this is by design (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist/utf8-plus-vt100.html).

However if we set 'Connection > Data > Terminal-type string' to 'putty' instead of the default 'xterm' it solves the issues because the server adjusts the rendering characters.

I believe this solution is better then using export NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS=1 which I have used up until now myself.