Subject: Photo (Re: Syntax Survey Version 2)

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 16:47:20 +0100

At 09:29 28/02/2001 -0500, Mark Smith wrote:
>I vote for choice "b."  RFC 2798 is an Informational RFC and as part of
>the LDAPBIS work we are not obligated to do any extra work to support
>inetOrgPerson.  I doubt photo is used much, if at all, in deployed
>directories and I for one would not like to encourage its use by adding
>it to a standards track RFC.

I have seen pictures used in several internal company directories. It is 
fairly popular.
I have not checked what syntax they were using, though :-(
Deprecating the one that is not used seems like a Good Thing.

BTW, I think inetOrgPerson (including Photo) should be standards-track. But 
not necessarily an ldapbis product.

--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, [email-masked]
+47 41 44 29 94
Personal email: [email-masked]

---

From: "Kurt D. Zeilenga" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2001 10:27:32 -0800

At 09:29 AM 2/28/01 -0500, Mark Smith wrote:
>"Ramsay, Ron" wrote:
>> I note that inetOrgPerson contains the attribute 'photo' without defining
>> the syntax. A look at RFC 1274 reveals that it is actually binary. While the
>> COSINE document is quite old, RFC 2798 is prolonging its life. I'm wondering
>> if it is now necessary to define the syntax for 'photo'? I would think that
>> either
>> a. inetOrgPerson is supported by the LDAP specification and the syntax of
>> 'photo' is defined in that specification, or
>> b. inetOrgPerson is not supported and RFC 2798 should define the syntax.
>

I concur.  It's my opinion that "photo" attribute is not part of
the LDAP "core" specification and hence out-of-scope of this working
group.

I believe RFC 2798 should be (eventually) revised to correct the
"photo" attribute type description (it has no SYNTAX nor SUP field),
any under specification of the schema elements, and other known
issues (see LDAPext archives).  I note that a subset of the known
RFC 2798 issues are dependent on LDAPbis work (e.g. the "binary"
syntax).

Kurt