On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 03:01:26PM +0100, Dave Turner wrote:
> 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?

> >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)

> ncurses-term and ncurses-base are installed.
> the output of
>
> env |grep -e TERM -e LC -e LANG -e LOCALE
>
> TERM=xterm
> LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
> LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
> COLORTERM=xfce4-terminal

Maybe try running aptitude with TERM=xfce and COLORTERM=xfce or go
ls /usr/share/terminfo/x/xfce4-terminal?
(Here, terminfo only has "xfce".)

Check that you're using a UTF8 font?

These are my bestt guesses; if they don't work, I'd be stumped.

HTH,
Isaac

PS:
A: Because it messes up the reading order.
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