Re: Display name attribute

[David Chadwick <d.w.chadwick@iti.salford.ac.uk>]

> Seems we're in sort of a circular argument.
> Often UI gets to display only one string to the
> user in some particular place (e.g. a scollable
> list of people). DisplayName solves the problem
> you get into where you don't know what string
> to display (e.g. there's multiple values of cn,

Spurious argument as their is only one of the values used in the DN
So you know which one to use.

> the site is storing some meaningless garbage
> in cn, etc).

No reason to do this, when CN can be meaningful to the human and
serial number can be used to provide uniqueness. As an example of 
meaningless garbage:
I have just been issued with a certificate by Thawte, with a common 
name of Thawte Freemail Member. That pretty good isnt it, as 
everyone else in the world gets the same CN!! So Netscape tells me 
the name of the cert owner, but it is no use. So even if a display 
name attribute was somewhere in my directory entry, it would not 
help Netscape to tell me whose certificate it was, would it?

So I am suggesting that a meaningful CN is better than a meaningful 
Display name

David



> If the administrator of the site
> chooses perversely to set all the DisplayName
> attributes on all the entries to the same string,
> then the rendered list will look pretty silly.
> They shouldn't do that !
> 
> Perhaps it would help if you could provide
> a more real-world example ?
> 
> 
> 
> 


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David Chadwick
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