Isaac,
ncurses-term and ncurses-base are installed.
the output of

env |grep -e TERM -e LC -e LANG -e LOCALE

is TERM=xterm
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
COLORTERM=xfce4-terminal

my laptop is now only running xfce4, and slim is gone because I prefer
to login into a terminal and then startx when I want to / need to.

DaveT

On 29/08/15 01:37, Isaac Dunham wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 08:45:51AM +0100, Dave Turner wrote:
>> I run devuan unstable 'ceres' on my Toshiba laptop and my iMac.
>> It all works with just a bit of weirdness.
>> I use apt-get update apt-get upgrade and then use aptitude to fix those
>> upgrades that get held back for various reasons.
>> Whenever I highlight one of the held back packages and press 'e' to examine
>> the various possibilities the names of the packages to be removed or
>> installed are mangled with block characters and/or assorted characters from
>> other non-Latin1 character sets. Upside down question marks etc.
>>
>> Any ideas what is going on?
>>
>> I am using the slim login manager and then depending on my mood fluxbox,
>> xfce, or lumina - the new desktop from pc-bsd.
> What's your terminal?
> Are ncurses-term and ncurses-base installed?
> What does this command output:
> env |grep -e TERM -e LC -e LANG -e LOCALE
>
> I ask these because I'm *guessing* that it's one of the following:
> -you don't have TERM pointing to an installed & correct termcap/terminfo
> database
> -your localization is screwy
> -you have the wrong fonts (not likely unless it's a plain xlib terminal)
>
>
> HTH,
> Isaac Dunham
>