Changes:

2004-03-09
Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) are supported.
This requires GNU-libidn (http://www.gnu.org/software/libidn/) as well as
Net::LibIDN (http://spaceship.berlios.de/index.php?page=idn.php)
and probably will make the software less portable.

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The archive whois.tar.gz is containing the following files:

  LIESMICH       description in German
  README         description in English
  whois.cgi      whois as CGI program
  whois.pl       whois as command line tool
  whois.pm       PERL module, required by whois.cgi an whois.pm

This whois script was written to query public information on domain names,
IP addresses, and responsible contact persons from public whois servers on
the Internet. The appropriate whois servers are choosen automatically which
is the main benefit you will draw from using this program.

All components of this program are written in PERL (http://www.perl.org/).
That means you need at least a working PERL interpreter (version 5.8 is
recommended) to use it. For querying whois services provided via HTTP you
additionaly need a text based web browser, e.g. elinks or lynx. This applies
only to some particular country domains, though, so you can live without.

I am using the program with Linux. Other UNIX variants should be fine as
long as PERL and the required libraries are installed. I do not know
anything about running it under Windows, however, with some modifications 
it should be possible.

Installation is simple: untar the archive and copy the files to an
appropriate directory. Modify the path definitions defined at the
beginning of whois.pm and whois.cgi according to your local directory
settings.

whois.pl can be started from the command line. Starting it without
parameters will give you some help. whois.cgi is intented for starting it as
CGI script from a HTTP server. If you do not know how to install CGI
scripts, consult the manual of your HTTP server. If it works you probably
want to change the HTML code within the script.

If whois.pl does not work you should get error messages from which you can
guess what has to be done to make it work. In case of complcated problems
you can ask me by E-Mail.


Erik Heinz <erik@iks-jena.de>
2004-03-25

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