Netscape Schema publishing violates standards !

[Shiv Shankar Ramakrishnan <Shiv@pspl.co.in>]

Hi,
The schema as published by Netscape dir servers in the subschemaSubentry
(cn=schema) has the following deviations from the standards (as defined
in RFC 2252) -

1. In the string encoding for an attribute type, the SYNTAX field has to  
   be an oid like 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.15 but Netscape instead
   publishes and wants it quoted like '1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.15'.
   This is wrong according to the BNF grammar for the encoding of an
   attribute type, as given in RFC 2252.

2. Also the SUP field for both attribute types and object classes also
   is quoted like SUP 'top'. This is also wrong. The legal values for
   this are oid or anhstring. And anhstring *cannot* have quotes.

I checked with three other dir servers (IBM v3, ISOCOR GDS, Novell NDS)
and of them IBM and ISOCOR follow the standards correctly. But Novell
makes exactly the same mistakes.

What the implications of this are that you *cannot* update Netscape
schema using a standards conforming schema ldif file. You have to have a
slightly different ldif file for Netscape. For that matter the same
issue arises with code to update the schema also. For all practical
purposes compatibility *has* been broken because Netscape dir server
3.x/4.x have been shipping for a long time. Anyone knows any workarounds
other than seperate ldif/code?
Thanks,
Shiv