RFC 2596 (rfc2596) - Page 1 of 9
Use of Language Codes in LDAP
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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