Re: UTF-8 full support in LDIF / LDIF v2

On Jun 16, 2009, at 4:54 PM, Steven Legg wrote:

> Also, X.500 directories already lose something in the translation  
> when outputting
> as LDIF.  For example, the choice in a DirectoryString is lost and  
> if that
> choice is teletexString then transcoding wipes out the exact octet  
> encoding.
> Most of the ad-hoc LDAP string encodings are lossy in some respect.
> Such changes are tolerable because the resulting value in LDIF is  
> the same
> as far as the matching rules are concerned. Unicode normalization of  
> the
> extended LDIF output is a similar situation.


The loss you are talking about is inherent in LDAP not LDIF.  That is,  
LDIF does not lose anything (for the LDAP requests it's design to  
represent) in translation to/from LDAP.  I don't it is tolerable for  
an LDAP intermediate format to "lose" LDAP information.

Unicode normalization of the LDIF will be problematic where the  
normalization required by the directory is different.   For instance,  
if the value is expected to be NFD but NFC was applied breakage will  
occur.

-- Kurt