Problem: want x-window-system without xdm

[Cheryl Homiak <chomiak@chartermi.net>]

I have installed x-window-system in order to use gnopernicus for gnome
accessibility. But I do not want X to start at boot.
I was advised to change my runlevel from 2 to 3 in my /etc/inittab but that did
not solve my problem. finally I removed xdm using
--ignore-dpendency=x-window-system. My installation works fine, including
gnopernicus/gnome. However, now apt-get won't let me upgrade or add packages; it
just keeps complaining about how i should run 'apt-get -f install" because of
the unmet dependencies.
I am using debian unstable; in earlier distributions you could install
x-window-system without xdm; I'm not sure when or why that changed. Is there
anything I can do about this?

thanks.

Cheryl