Chuck,
	To amplify what Greg Woods said, the WHOIS protocol 
specification is very, very simple, and imposes almost no format to 
speak of on the output from the server. I reworked the whois(1) man 
page before the last release; you might find it edifying.

I also submitted a PR years ago suggesting that we replace with 
rwhois or whois++ but the utility of that depends squarely on servers 
for those extended protocols being deployed by the registries, and I 
don't know that they have.

Not a very satisfying answer, but that's the state of the world as I 
understand it.

	Erik <fair@clock.org>