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Re: LAST CALL: draft-ietf-ldapext-lang-00.txt

Steve Kille wrote:

>  >> 1) Backwards compatibility with LDAPv3 clients that do not support
>  >> this specification.   In particular, what is the conformant action of
>  >> an LDAPv3 client getting back language information.
>  >
>  >Attributes with unknown tags should be treated as unknown
>  >attribute types. Just like if a client asked for the name attribute
>  >and got back cn, sn, givenName, and nickName, but did
>  >not know anything about the nickName attribute. If a client
>  >asks for cn and gets back cn and cn;lang-fr, it should just
>  >ignore it (or display it - the client's choice, obviously).
>
> My gut reaction is that this will cause interoperability problems for some
> LDAP clients.  I'd certainly be interested in the views of those that are
> implemented client side products (we are server focused).

It may, yes, I agree. Just as attribute subtyping may cause
interoperability problems for some clients. My gut feel,
though, validated by my experience with clients I have seen
so far, is that the problems will be minor, and that this is
the best approach to achieve this important new functionality.
Do you have a suggestion for mitigating these potential
problems further? Should we add an explicit note to the
document about it?


>  >> 2) X.500(97) also defines language tagging.  I think that there should
>  >> be information which ties this together.    Can LDAP language tags be
>  >> mapped onto X.500 tags in some/any circumstances.
>  >
>  >X.500 does this with contexts (my understanding). I'd be
>  >happy to see someone more familiar with X.500 define
>  >what this mapping should be.                         -- Tim
>
> I think that this would be useful.  I have not looked at the details.  If
> someone has, I think a short note to this list, with summary added to the
> text would be very very useful.

If someone wants to turn Kevin's note, forwarded by David,
into a short section of the document, I think that would be
fine. Or, if it was going to be a lot of work, not done soon,
etc., we could publish a separate document.            -- Tim