Question
Does the shell provide Unicode support?
Answer
Yes.
Problem
Localized characters doesn't look good. (replaced by questionmarks etc)
Solution
Write this command at the shell prompt
echo 'export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"' > ~/.profile
Next time you log in your shell will be in unicode.
To use unicode in irssi, type this in the command prompt in irssi:
/set term_charset UTF-8
Use this command if you want to send text in another charset to other users that are still using ISO for example:
/set recode_out_default_charset iso-8859-1
Remember that you have to change the charset in your SSH-client aswell! Use the translation option in putty for example.