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Re: [ldapext] UTF-8 full support in LDIF / LDIF v2
Kurt Zeilenga wrote:
>
> On Jun 18, 2009, at 3:57 AM, Michael Ströder wrote:
>
>> Stepping back a bit from the details of the interesting Unicode issues
>> posted here I wonder what the general strategy of the IETF regarding
>> these issues is?
>
> Punt.
>
>> I remember discussions on the ietf-pkix mailing list
>> mentioning problems like these (e.g. when displaying subject names of
>> X.509 certs) without any real solution.
>>
>> I think any system which takes (user) input, decodes it to a Unicode
>> code point sequence and display it to the user is affected by issues
>> with BIDI, combining characters and duplicate Unicode points.
>
> Yes. The IETF tends to punt such issues to the user interface
> development community. The IETF tends to restrict itself to design of
> protocols not design user interface (though the IETF does try to
> document user interface issues, especially those with security impact).
>
> I think of LDIF as an alternative encoding of protocol data units, used
> for out-of-band transfer data between protocol peers. That is, I punt
> the "user" as far as I can.
I'm not sure whether I fully understand the usage of the word "punt".
(Bear in mind I'm not a native English speaker.)
I agree that LDIF is just an alternative encoding of protocol data
units. So lifting the ASCII limitation in LDIF would IMO not introduce
any other problem a LDAP client with user interface does not already
have today (despite the new-line issue).
> Others see LDIF as a user display format
Strictly speaking nobody said that. ;-}
Seriously there's another layer between the LDIF data and the user - the
user interface. So if the IETF does not care about the user interface we
also don't have to care about that regarding LDIF.
Whether a particular LDIF is displayable by any means in some localized
context is not something we have to solve at this LDIF-formatted PDU
level because we also don't do it for normal LDAP PDUs.
> and user input format for LDAP data.
If the user enters data into an input field most times he uses his
normal keyboard and the display shows the input using fonts installed on
his system which matches his language. I don't think that there is
really a new problem introduced except a BIDI problem because the
attribute type names are written left-to-right. Maybe even this could be
solved in a decent user interface.
So I'd lift the ASCII limitation but I'm not keen on having to deal with
the "here" document scheme.
Ciao, Michael.
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