RFC 3866 (rfc3866) - Page 2 of 15
Language Tags and Ranges in the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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