RFC 2596 (rfc2596) - Page 2 of 9

Use of Language Codes in LDAP

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RFC 2596             Use of Language Codes in LDAP              May 1999


   Language codes are case insensitive.  For example, the language code
   "en-us" is the same as "EN-US" and "en-US".

   Implementations MUST NOT otherwise interpret the structure of the
   code when comparing two codes, and MUST treat them as simply strings
   of characters. Client and server implementations MUST allow any
   arbitrary string which follows the patterns given in RFC 1766 to be
   used as a language code.

3. Use of Language Codes in LDAP

   This section describes how LDAP implementations MUST interpret
   language codes in performing operations.

   In general, an attribute with a language code is to be treated as a
   subtype of the attribute without a language code.  If a server does
   not support storing language codes with attribute values in the DIT,
   then it MUST always treat an attribute with a language code as an
   unrecognized attribute.

3.1. Attribute Description

   An attribute consists of a type, a list of options for that type, and
   a set of one or more values.  In LDAP, the type and the options are
   combined into the AttributeDescription, defined in section 4.1.5 of
   [1]. This is represented as an attribute type name and a possibly-
   empty list of options.  One of these options associates a natural
   language with values for that attribute.

        language-option = "lang-" lang-code

        lang-code = printable-ascii ; a code as defined in RFC 1766

   Multiple language options may be present on a particular value.

   The language code has no effect on the character set encoding for
   string representations of DirectoryString syntax values; the UTF-8
   representation of UniversalString (ISO 10646) is always used.

   Examples of valid AttributeDescription:
        givenName;lang-en-US
        CN;lang-ja

   In LDAP and in examples in this document, a directory attribute is
   represented as an AttributeDescription with a list of values.  Note
   that the data could be stored in the LDAP server in a different
   representation.




Wahl & Howes                Standards Track
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