International chars w/ OpenLDAP+Mail clients

[Marc Andre Selig <a411@sedacon.com>]

Hi all,

I am running into problems with international charsets while trying to
implement an OpenLDAP directory for use by the LDAP clients of e-mail
programs such as Netscape, Outlook Express and Pegasus Mail.

OpenLDAP stores data in UTF-8 format.  When I search for somebody whose
name contains an international character, the results are in UTF-8, too.

Netscape 4.75 can display these, but when I want to see more
information, the request is sent back in Latin1 (URL-encoded), and my
LDAP server does not find the corresponding entry.  Outlook Express 5
handles everything fine.  Pegasus mail does not know how to display
UTF-8, but at least can show details on found records: In the next
query, it simply uses the received result string verbatim.

When I switch internal LDAP representation of my data to Latin1
encoding, Pegasus works just fine, but Netscape and Outlook break
completely.  Netscape does have an obscure option to use Latin1 instead
of UTF-8, but it's a PITA to use. Outlook just breaks.

What should I do?  I am sure I am overlooking something.  What is the
correct procedure to maintain an OpenLDAP database containing
international characters, which must be accessible in searches?  Any
suggestions?

(No, switching all clients to Outlook Express just because its LDAP
client is the only one that works is definitely *not* an option.)

Thanks for any answers,
Marc Andre