Red Hat Directory Server 8.0 Administrator's Guide

Appendix D. Internationalization
Red Hat Directory Server allows users to store, manage, and search for entries and their
associated attributes in a number of different languages. An internationalized directory can be
an invaluable corporate resource, providing employees and business partners with immediate
access to the information they need in languages they understand.
Directory Server supports all international charactersets by default because directory data is
stored in UTF-8. Further, Directory Server can use specified matching rules and collation orders
based on language preferences in search operations.
NOTE
ASCII characters are required for attribute and object class names.
1. About Locales
Directory Server provides support for multiple languages through the use of locales. A locale
identifies language-specific information about how users of a specific region, culture, or custom
expect data to be presented, including how data of a given language is interpreted and how
data is to be sorted, or collated.
In addition, the locale information indicates what code page should be used to represent a given
language. A code page is an internal table that the operating system uses to relate keyboard
keys to character font screen displays.
More specifically, a locale defines four things:
•
Collation order. The collation order provides language and cultural-specific information about
how the characters of a given language are to be sorted. It identifies things like the sequence
of the letters in the alphabet, how to compare letters with accents to letters without accents,
and if there are any characters that can be ignored when comparing strings. The collation
order also takes into account culture-specific information about a language, such as the
direction in which the language is read (left to right, right to left, or up and down).
•
Character type. The character type distinguishes alphabetic characters from numeric or other
characters. For example, in some languages, the pipe (|) character is considered punctuation
while in others it is considered alphabetic. In addition, it defines the mapping of upper-case to
lower-case letters.
•
Monetary format. The monetary format specifies the monetary symbol used by a specific
region, whether the symbol goes before or after its value, and how monetary units are
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