When I said clients would not be affected, I was referring to
client implementations. I don't think they will be coded
to depend on the details of case-insensitive name comparisons.
The actual users are a different matter. I certainly see that
they could be quite legitimately discomfited if the mapping is one
that they do not expect. They might also find unusable a server
which simply rejected any names with a double-s character with
NFS4ERR_BADCHAR, which would be compliant with the spec, but
not very useful for a German speaker.
Now this specific issue is a bit different than the BADCHAR
error. In that case, the spec gives the server a great deal
of freedom, which the server may use to create an interoperable
implementation that certain users will find unacceptable. The
NFS protocol provides a way to access the file system and the
file system semantics is one the German speaker won't find usable.
In the case mapping issue, the spec does define the behaviour and
it may be (we still don't know the details) that the server implementing
that behavior make it unacceptable to a user with yet other language
requirements. However it is similar, in that the issue is between
the ultimate user and the server, while the client implementation is
most likely not going to be affected, by the mistaken (I assume)
formulation in the spec, or any subsequent modification.
-----Original Message-----
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand [mailto:harald@alvestrand.no]
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 5:54 PM
To: Noveck, Dave; Patrik Fältström; spencer.shepler@sun.com;
beame@bws.com; brent.callaghan@sun.com; mike@eisler.com;
david.robinson@sun.com; robert.thurlow@sun.com
Cc: Mark Davis; IESG
Subject: RE: RFC 3530
--On fredag, juni 20, 2003 14:00:26 -0700 "Noveck, Dave"
<Dave.Noveck@netapp.com> wrote:
> As far as interoperability testing so far, my guess is that almost all
> testing so far has been with servers that implement case-sensitive
> comparisons. The exception would probably be the Hummingbird server,
> but I don't believe that most clients would be affected if a server's
> use of case-insensitive comparisons were somewhat non-standard.
smile when you say that..... and talk to a German who has a file name with
a double-s in it..........
the problem is that *everyone* regards case-folding as simple, and in their
own cultural context, it is.... but add them all together and
despair....(or implement the Unicode algorithm....)