[anti-abuse-wg] Looking for advice on WhoIs server query format

Over the past few days I have come to realize the not all of the TLD WhoIs servers seems to use or support a common query format and I was hoping someone on this list might be able to point me to forum or web page where I can find more information on this subject. For instance I have found the whois.arin.net will respond with a helpful reply if it does not accept the arguments or prefixes for an IP query. It responds to let me know that I can get more information about the query format by sending it a query with noting but '?\r\n' but whois.ripe.net is not nearly as helpful and simply complains, without offering any information about how or where one might find details about acceptable arguments. TIA