Re: ;binary and *

["Kurt D. Zeilenga" <Kurt@OpenLDAP.org>]

At 02:28 PM 2002-03-02, David Chadwick wrote:
>Absolutely not. The user has asked for ALL attributes.

It could be argued that '*' (or empty list) should be treated
as a request for all attributes in their 'native' transfer
encoding.

>Unless access
>controls prevent it, all should be returned, even if the user cant
>handle them. For example, pictures should be returned, even though today
>some well known windows clients cant display them (whilst others can).
>This is no different to sending others back using ;binary encoding.

There is a difference.  A client can determine that attribute
type is of a syntax which it doesn't recognize as printable.
But a client has no way to determine whether a particular
option is a tagging, transfer, or other option.

>The server does not know what the client supports, so should assume it can
>support everything since it has not limited what it wants.

A server does not know what the client supports, so it should
assume the client does not support any non-tagging option.

How should a client deal with "cn;foo" when it doesn't recognize "foo"?

If foo is a tagging option, then it can treat cn;foo as it
would any other subtype of cn.

If foo is a transfer option, then it cannot simply treat cn;foo
as a subtype of cn.

It could be argued that servers cannot expect all clients to
recognize ;binary let alone all possible non-tagging options
and hence should not use any non-tagging option without some
form of solicitation by the client.

What I've suggested is kind of a middle ground. 

Kurt