type such as "charset" and "collation".  While MySQL wants all character-
based CAST calls to use the CHAR type, we now create a real CHAR
object at CAST time and copy over all the parameters it has, so that
an expression like ``cast(x, mysql.TEXT(charset='utf8'))`` will
render ``CAST(t.col AS CHAR CHARACTER SET utf8)``.

- Added new "unicode returns" detection to the MySQL dialect and
to the default dialect system overall, such that any dialect
can add extra "tests" to the on-first-connect "does this DBAPI
return unicode directly?" detection. In this case, we are
adding a check specifically against the "utf8" encoding with
an explicit "utf8_bin" collation type (after checking that
this collation is available) to test for some buggy unicode
behavior observed with MySQLdb version 1.2.3.  While MySQLdb
has resolved this issue as of 1.2.4, the check here should
guard against regressions.  The change also allows the "unicode"
checks to log in the engine logs, which was not previously
the case. [ticket:2906]

- build a new Sphinx extension that allows dialect info
to be entered as directives which is then rendered consistently
throughout all dialect/dbapi sections
- break out the "empty_strings" requirement for oracle test

- begin consolidating docs for dialects to be more self contained
- add a separate section for "external" dialects
- not sure how we're going to go with this yet.