I18n support

[Radu "Ux" D.]

Hi all

I am working to a network solution which uses BIND NS, and the request
for supporting the wider charsets brings some questions about named
implementation.

Here are the steps:
1. use nsupdate and add a TXT record:
update add d.itcnetworks 123 txt ßöäü
2. use dig to see the results
>dig @127.0.0.1 d.itcnetworks txt

; <<>> DiG 9.3.1 <<>> @127.0.0.1 d.itcnetworks txt
; (1 server found)
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 1449
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;d.itcnetworks.                 IN      TXT

;; ANSWER SECTION:
d.itcnetworks.          123     IN      TXT     "\225\148\132\129"

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
d.itcnetworks.          86400   IN      NS      burebista.itcnetworks.

;; Query time: 0 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)
;; WHEN: Mon Oct 10 16:16:24 2005
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 72

3. use nslookup
>nslookup
Default Server:  ldap.itcnetworks
Address:  10.1.1.2

> server 127.0.0.1
Default Server:  localhost
Address:  127.0.0.1

> ls -d d.itcnetworks
[localhost]
d.itcnetworks.                 SOA    burebista.itcnetworks . (202 10800
3600 604800 86400)
d.itcnetworks.                 TXT             "ßöäü"

d.itcnetworks.                 NS     burebista.itcnetworks
d.itcnetworks.                 SOA    burebista.itcnetworks . (202 10800
3600 604800 86400)
>

4. Also, the zone file looks like
$ORIGIN .
$TTL 86400    ; 1 day
d.itcnetworks        IN SOA    burebista.itcnetworks. . (
               202        ; serial
               10800      ; refresh (3 hours)
               3600       ; retry (1 hour)
               604800     ; expire (1 week)
               86400      ; minimum (1 day)
               )
           NS    burebista.itcnetworks.
$TTL 123    ; 2 minutes 3 seconds
           TXT    "\225\148\132\129"


Are the nslookup / dig having different results? Is it the zone file the
standard way of BIND named to save the chars?

Also, I fed the named with the zone file containing the germans chars,
and it had no problem interpreting them. dig still doesn't show the
german chars, and also, after a while, named replaced the chars with the
digit representation.

Is that the way that named deals with local character sets? Could you
please point where to look to understand the named philosophy for i18n?
Is a recompile required, or something else, to have named running with 
i18n support?

-- 
Thx

Radu "Ux" D.