RFC 3866 (rfc3866) - Page 2 of 15

Language Tags and Ranges in the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)

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RFC 3866            Language Tags and Ranges in LDAP           July 2004


   This document replaces RFC 2596.  Appendix A summaries changes made
   since RFC 2596.

   Appendix B discusses differences from X.500(1997) "contexts"
   mechanism.

   Appendix A and B are provided for informational purposes only.

   The remainder of this section provides a summary of Language Tags,
   Language Ranges, and Attribute Descriptions.

1.1.  Language Tags

   Section 2 of BCP 47 [RFC 3066] describes the language tag format which
   is used in LDAP.  Briefly, it is a string of [ASCII] letters and
   hyphens.  Examples include "fr", "en-US" and "ja-JP".  Language tags
   are case insensitive.  That is, the language tag "en-us" is the same
   as "EN-US".

   Section 2 of this document details use of language tags in LDAP.

1.2.  Language Ranges

   Section 2.5 of BCP 47 [RFC 3066] describes the language ranges.
   Language ranges are used to specify sets of language tags.

   A language range matches a language tag if it is exactly equal to the
   tag, or if it is exactly equal to a prefix of the tag such that the
   first character following the prefix is "-".  That is, the language
   range "de" matches the language tags "de" and "de-CH" but not "den".
   The special language range "*" matches all language tags.

   Due to attribute description option naming restrictions in LDAP, this
   document defines a different language range syntax.  However, the
   semantics of language ranges in LDAP are consistent with BCP 47.

   Section 3 of this document details use of language ranges in LDAP.

1.3.  Attribute Descriptions

   This section provides an overview of attribute descriptions in LDAP.
   LDAP attributes and attribute descriptions are defined in [RFC 2251].

   An attribute consists of a type, a set of zero or more associated
   tagging options, and a set of one or more values.  The type and the
   options are combined into the AttributeDescription.





Zeilenga                    Standards Track
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