[db-wg] WHOIS client(s) and Windows ?

On 28/07/2019 05:19, Ronald F. Guilmette via db-wg wrote:
> I myself am an old school die hard UNIX guy from way back, but recently
> I have been wanting to shared certain information relating to certain
> WHOIS records with some other folks, some of whom are strictly and
> only Windows users.
>
> Are there any WHOIS clients available for Windows that provide the
> full range of RIPE WHOIS options?  If not why not?  (Sad as it may
> be, Windows is still used by about 90% of everybody, so it seems
> odd that WHOIS clients are only built for UNIX and UNIX-like systems.)

I continue to use Cyberkit 2.5 from 2001 which allows me the full range 
of whois options.

I would love to hear of something more up to date to replace it.

-Hank



>
> Has anyone ever tried to build the RIPE WHOIS client, from sources,
> on Windows?  If so, what was the result?
>
> I have been telling my Windows-only friends to try to get WHOIS info
> from, for example, whois.ripe.net, by just using telnet and connecting
> to port 43 and then typing in their options and search keys, but as
> I have learned, the results in that case are entirely sub-optimal.
>
> If you do this, you will get a "stairstep" set of output lines, apparently
> because the output of whois.ripe.net, like most other WHOIS servers,
> assumes that ends-of-lines should be represented by just <LF> and not
> by the <CR><LF> sequence that is formally required for most other
> protocols.  (The latter is fine for UNIX and UNIX-like systems, while
> the former is generally needed for Windows systems.)
>
> The original RFCs covering WHOIS (RFC 812 and RFC 954) were rather
> entirely ambiguous about how response lines should be terminated,
> however the newer RFC 3912, Section 3, strongly hints that response
> lines should be terminated with <CR><LF> even though it fails to ever
> come out and say that explicitly.
>
> So, is the whois.ripe.net WHOIS server failing to be standard confoming?
>
> Regardless of whether it is or isn't I really do need a WHOIS client
> that I can give to my various Windows-only friends.
>
> Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.
>
>
> Regards,
> rfg
>