boxdraw characters corrupt unless unicode_start is run before starting mc

[Felix Miata]

en_US installation via HTTP onto test system initiated by Grub loading installation kernel & initrd with 'tasks="standard"' roughly 30 hours ago, then mc, sddm and selected KDE/KDF packages added via apt*.

DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu Vivid Vervet (development branch)"
VERSION="15.04 (Vivid Vervet)"
Linux gx62b 3.19.0-10-generic #10-Ubuntu SMP Mon Mar 23 16:25:20 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

/proc/cmdline tail:
root=/dev/sda22 ro ipv6.disable=1 noresume splash=0 vga=791 video=1440x900@60

fbset output:
mode "1440x900"
    geometry 1440 900 1440 900 32
    timings 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    accel true
    rgba 8/16,8/8,8/0,0/0
endmode

To reproduce:
1-start mc 3:4.8.13-3 on any of tty1-6 without having run unicode_start since booting

Actual behavior:
1-boxdraw characters are drawn with wrong characters
2-normal operation output is corrupted by random characters drawn in various places
3-various screen drawing areas do not get refreshed after normal activity

Expected behavior:
1-box characters drawn where and as they belong
2-random characters do not appear in diverse places
3-screen areas refreshed after normal operations

Notes:
1-Cmdline is as it is because it's what is required to get boot messages and tty output to display in optimal video mode with 16:10 (41cm x 26cm) display that reports incorrect native mode. 1440x900 is its only supported mode with a matching aspect ratio.
2-https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=458362 seems to discuss same or closely similar issues, and maybe https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=780516 and/or https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=750326 too.

[Felix Miata (mrmazda)]

I tried to paste console-setup 1.108ubuntu4 from bug.apport into the package name field during report composition, but it was rejected. I changed it to simply console-setup, but where that went I have no idea.

[Yury V. Zaytsev (zyv)]

I don't think this has anything to do with mc, really. You can check by saving the "screenshot" of mc made in a terminal emulator to a file, and then loading it with cat. If it also appears garbled, I would say it's a problem at a different level.

[Felix Miata (mrmazda)]

Mc exposes the failure, doesn't cause the failure. AFAICT, the failure is in console-setup

[Yury V. Zaytsev (zyv)]

Re-assigning to console-setup.