multi-national character sets?

Hello all,

I'm looking for a few good pointers to docs on how to handle multinational
character sets (European exclusively) with PostgreSQL and PHP for a
web database application. Currently using PHP 3.0.16 and PostgreSQL 6.5.2
but I can upgrade if that helps.

I see in the docs that you can compile in multi-byte support, but I have
no idea how that works, for comparisons with LIKE or regexps, as well as
for sorting with ORDER BY. Do "c" and "c-cedille" or "e" and "e-aigu" end
up together or do I need to handle that programmatically?

I don't mind doing the homework, but I'm hoping somebody on this list can
point me in the right direction.

Thanks
--Louis <louis(at)bertrandtech(dot)on(dot)ca>