RE: Attribute names not Internationalized ?

["Salter, Thomas A" <Thomas.Salter@unisys.com>]

The real reason is that attribute names are part of the protocol.  If the
names are internationalized, then ldap servers and clients must also be
changed to support the internationalized names.  It then becomes extremely
difficult to produce products that interoperate.  

The way to internationalize attribute names is to write clients that
translate the attribute name found in the protocol into the appropriate
local-language equivalent (based on some configuration table).

It's best to think of the attribute names defined in RFC 2252, 2256 and
elsewhere as fixed, meaningless strings that are never exposed to the end
user.  In fact, there would be less confusion if they were all just object
ids.

Tom


 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: Jim Sermersheim [mailto:JIMSE@novell.com]
 > Sent: Thursday, October 07, 1999 2:20 PM
 > To: ietf-ldapext@netscape.com; sanjay.jain@software.com
 > Subject: Re: Attribute names not Internationalized ?
 > 
 > 
 > When I looked into this I decided it was becasue of an X.409 
 > restriction on the allowable characters in names. It said 
 > something about only ascii digits and letters, and a dash.  
 > I also remember It went further to say the dash could not 
 > end a name, nor could there be two dashes together (-- is an 
 > ASN.1 comment).  So LDAP servers which front-end X.500 
 > directories could concievebly run into problems if the 
 > restriction on allowable characters was relaxed.  I'm not 
 > sure that's the real reason, and I don't have a copy of 
 > x.409 handy to verify these memories.
 > 
 > Jim
 > 
 > >>> sanjay jain <sanjay.jain@software.com> 10/7/99 11:42:54 AM >>>
 > 
 > attribute names have not been internationalized. 
 > Does anybody know what's the reason ? 
 > 
 > thanks 
 > sanjay 
 >