One frequently asked question is « omlgol y iz utf-8 b0rken in zsh lol ».

Thanks to the efforts of Clint Adams, Andrey Borzenkov, Erinn Clark, Wayne Davison, Oliver Kiddle, Bart Schaefer, and, most of all, Peter Stephenson, zsh-beta 4.3.0-dev-1+20050815-1, due to hit mirrors in the next few hours, is compiled with multi-byte character support enabled.

So, if you want to stem the tide of whining about this issue, rush out to sid and beat on the zsh-beta package until the bugs are found and obliterated.

Make sure you

setopt printeightbit