RFC 2596 (rfc2596) - Page 1 of 9

Use of Language Codes in LDAP

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Network Working Group                                            M. Wahl
Request for Comments: 2596                  Innosoft International, Inc.
Category: Standards Track                                       T. Howes
                                           Netscape Communications Corp.
                                                                May 1999


                     Use of Language Codes in LDAP


Status of this Memo

   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999).  All Rights Reserved.

1. Abstract

   The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol [1] provides a means for
   clients to interrogate and modify information stored in a distributed
   directory system.  The information in the directory is maintained as
   attributes [2] of entries.  Most of these attributes have syntaxes
   which are human-readable strings, and it is desirable to be able to
   indicate the natural language associated with attribute values.

   This document describes how language codes [3] are carried in LDAP
   and are to be interpreted by LDAP servers.  All implementations MUST
   be prepared to accept language codes in the LDAP protocols.  Servers
   may or may not be capable of storing attributes with language codes
   in the directory.  This document does not specify how to determine
   whether particular attributes can or cannot have language codes.

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED",  "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [4].

2. Language Codes

   Section 2 of RFC 1766 [3] describes the language code format which is
   used in LDAP.  Briefly, it is a string of ASCII alphabetic characters
   and hyphens.  Examples include "fr", "en-US" and "ja-JP".




Wahl & Howes                Standards Track
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