Ncurses prompts look broken in PuTTY from Windows

command-line putty

16,297

Solution 1

Configure putty to read utf8. putty -> config -> window -> translation choose utf in "Recieved data in ..." This is not a byobu issue, it is a putty issue.

Solution 2

Related to Putty, I added this note to the byobu(1) manpage a while back:

> PuTTY  users have reported that the
> F2, F3, and F4 shortcut keys are not
> working properly.  PuTTY sends the
> same escape sequences as the linux
> console for F1-F4 by default.  You can
> fix this problem in the PuTTY config,
> Terminal -> Keyboard -> Function keys:
> Xterm R6.

See:

http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg01525.html

Solution 3

Ubuntu uses UTF-8 for its terminal, but byobu appears to use the "ISO-8859-1 (Western European)" charset for it menus. You can set the charset in Window -> Translation.

I've found the following code on the Internet, and I'm still happy with it. byobu might have more options, but I like this as well (~/.screenrc):

startup_message off
hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string '%{= kG}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{=kw}%?%-Lw%?%{r}(%{W}%n*%f%t%?(%u)%?%{r})%{w}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{g}][%{B}%Y-%m-%d %{W}%c %{g}]%{w} %l'
shelltitle "$ |bash"
termcapinfo xterm ti@:te@
altscreen on

Note: for byobu, shelltitle "$ |bash" must be removed / commented, otherwise byobu won't work.

16,297

youri

Updated on September 17, 2022

Comments

youri over 1 year

Byobu looks very broken in PuTTY. I've already fixed the key mapping issue, but this issue isn't specified in the man page or even Google:

Notice the misplaced position of the list of windows, the broken selector position, the duplication of the last window, the random a in the top right, and the misplaced apply option. You can't see this, but the last option is not selectable.

Is there some option in PuTTY I need to use in order to see this correctly?
- Admin over 13 years
  
  If someone wants to create the putty tag, that would be nice
- Admin over 13 years
  
  I don't have Windows anymore, so I can't test, but I would look into the charset settings of PuTTY.
- Admin over 13 years
  
  Screen is great - you just need to have a decent .screenrc
youri over 13 years

Putty seems to default to ISO-8859-1:1998 (Latin-1, West Europe), so thats not the issue. Switching to UTF-8 made the terminal extremely slow but fixed the menu. What is that code supposed to do though? Didn't change anything in byobu
Lekensteyn over 13 years

By default, screen provides you just a shell with multiple (invisible) tabs. With that code, you can have a fancy shell, with on the bottom a (colored) bar like [ computername ][ 0$ bash 1-$ bash (2*$bash) ][2010-12-11 16:24 ] 1.30 1.40 1.43.
youri over 13 years

I've already done that to make Byobu at least usable.
youri over 13 years

Just to confirm what I said above for anyone else who comes along: I meant that the screenshot above is with putty in Xterm R6 mode. So this isn't a fix for this problem.
Dustin Kirkland about 12 years

Agreed. Note that this is specified in the byobu.1 manpage.