First of all... standard request handler uses the default search field specified in your schema.xml -- dismax does not. dismax looks at the "qf" param to decide which fields to search for the "q" param. if you started with the example schema the dismax handler may have a default value for "qf" which is trying to query different fields then you actaully use in your documents.
&debugQuery=true will show you exactly what query structure (and on which fields) each request is using. Second... I don't know Russian, and character encoding issues tend to make my head spin, but the fact that the responseHeader is echoing back a q param containing java string literal sequences suggests that you are doing soemthing wrong. you should be sending the URL encoding of the actaul characters, not the URL encoding of the actual Russian word, not the URL encoding or the java string literal encoding of the Russian word. I suspect the fact that you are getting any results at all from your first query is a fluke. The <str name="q"> in the responseHeader should show you the real word you want to search for -- once it does, then you'll know that you have the URL+UTF8 encoding issues straightened out. *THEN* i would worry about the dismax/standard behavior. : <lst name="params"> : <str : name="q">\u041f\u0440\u0435\u0434\u0432\u0430\u0440\u0438\u0442\u0435\u043b\u044c\u043d\u043e\u0435</str> : </lst> -Hoss
