How Applications Should Use Display Specifiers

Most of this chapter has discussed how the Microsoft® Windows® shell and Active Directory™ administrative snap-ins take advantage of display specifiers. How should you use them in your application?

1. For labels for class and attribute names, use the classDisplayName and attributeDisplayNames properties of the display specifier objects for the appropriate locale. This enables you to take advantage of the localized display names and avoid doing unnecessary localization of the class and attribute names. Display specifiers also provide a single location (that is, in the directory) for localized text labels for class and attribute names.

   Do not use the cn, classDisplayName, ldapDisplayName properties on the classSchema or attributeSchema objects to display text labels in your applications—these properties are not localized.

2. Use creation wizards to create new objects.
3. Using localized icons.