Re: (ITS#7157) UTF-8 support for "mail" attribute

[Kurt@OpenLDAP.org]

On Feb 7, 2012, at 1:03 PM, alfiej@opera.com wrote:

> When searching for Chinese names in the "to:" field under Thunderbird, I see
> asserted_value_validate_normalize() not returning LDAP_SUCCESS in filter.c. This
> is because the "mail" attribute in core.schema is of type "IA5 String" but the
> Chinese name falls outside the character set.

No, it's because Thunderbird failed to convert the email address to form expected.  It should have applied the "To Ascii" conversion as defined in the EIA and IDNA specs.

There is no need to change the mail attribute or introduce a replacement.   Directory applications (including email clients) should just do the proper conversions.

Anyways, as Quannah notes, this is an IETF issue, not an OpenLDAP specific issue.

-- Kurt