>So, they don't use IP Telephony then?

A lot of VoIP deployments simply ignore the whole DNS side of things, or at best use an A record. Especially in wholesale, it's IP only (using domains breaks some things), and authentication is based on IP, too. (Source IP on a UDP packet - very secure.)

TXT isn't an option because the records themselves are unsorted. Use the above command without the pipe to sort looks weird, but not as weird as TXT would.

TXT records are actually variably-sized arrays of strings, making them very suitable for ASCII art. Unfortunately, `dig +short TXT` displays them as

    "string1" "string2" "string3"

instead of on separate lines. However, this is easily remedied with sed.

Using TXT for artwork also has the advantage that you don't risk an intermediate resolver re-ordering things.

Source: When this came up about a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7185326

Unfortunately our DNS service doesn't allow NAPTR records, so we had to go the TXT route. Here's a large wooden object:

dig +short txt log.netkine.com | sed $'s/\" \"/\\\n/g'

I get this. I can't make out what it's supposed to be.

                         P!**9N#
                        9=  #(a:?4
                       {w   Tj(d w?#
                     @(d   !nPx   A>4
                    P=W  @{d :   9=w\;
                   V:   9a# td P:d  tj
                  {w  9=W# Px @=#  F=+
                @(d  {d  #@= P=   P=@:
               P=#  WJ#sjP:WP= a?tx(a#
              P=@=d  gawV= 9=     wawa\;?
             {w :    #9:w       @!9_axw
           @{d 1d P9:wd    P9na\;=# WSgmN
          P=W @=9=w    9{  # #:w   W4Wmm
         Pn  #(vj   P{aW    #{d     W4Dm
        !a P9nW    !w#     P:d        mW
      #{d@:w##    {d9:/4  P=
     P=WP=@=w/#  Px{J4Pd {a
    P\;H1w Aw9j#  :m?(J:W{d
   Ynwwaa*:wW## {d  9=V:d
   \;44#WWRav*# tj 9:d@=
   A?WW#W#W#w==d@(d !a
    A?WWUWQ#mNs4:W td
     As*XUW#UWNsj@:d
      #wv!W4W WW?=#
         bw?9*9!="

a log...

it's big, it's heavy, it's wood

I really don't think you need to use NAPTR here. Using TXT works just fine, if you do a sort, if you prepend line numbers to the records. Alas, you still have to do a sort. It would be wonderful if there was a hack that involved not using the sort. Here's one I just added: dig txt art.ten7.com |sort

MX or with numbers then?

Numbers

Well I guess I need a new alt. dns to provision phones with.

Which clients use NAPTR? Can't you have a SRV record without NAPTR?