Strange terminal behaviour

[staticsafe]

On 09/01/2013 1:44 PM, Nikhil Nair wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> I'm a recent convert to Ubuntu, using it on a remote server; the
> Linux-based server I have at home runs a very old version of Debian.  I
> connect from a Windows XP-based laptop running SecureCRT and/or PuTTY.
> I'm using a regular text-based terminal - not X Windows.
> 
> I'm getting a strange problem with non-VT100 characters being used on
> the terminal, despite the TERM environment variable automatically being
> set to "vt100".  It's odd since, with identical Windows terminal setups
> when connecting to both machines, I get the issue on the Ubuntu machine
> but not on the Debian one.
> 
> The easiest way to trigger this is by attempting to compile a C program
> with undefined references (e.g. a variable that wasn't declared), using
> gcc.  The single quotes around the variable name should be written as
> ordinary apostrophes, and that's what happens on the Debian box; but on
> the Ubuntu one, it's attempting to do something fancier: on PuTTY, they
> both look the same (they come out as an A circumflex...), whereas with
> SecureCRT, they're both displayed as three characters - the opening one
> is A circumflex, Euro, tilde, and the closing one is A circumflex, Euro,
> trademark.
> 
> This sort of thing is more than a slight nuissance to me, as I'm blind,
> and these weird symbols mess with my screen reader.  They're even more
> of a problem in ncurses-style interfaces (several of which are used by
> configure scripts when installing packages...).
> 
> All I've checked about the terminal setup, as yet, is the TERM
> environment variable, with is set to "vt100" on both machines.  I don't
> know enough about this sort of thing to know what to check next, or
> where to look up a solution in the documentation, so any help would be
> much appreciated!
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Nikhil.
> 
> 

Can you give us the output of the `locale` command on the Debian and the
Ubuntu box?
-- 
staticsafe
O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org