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Re: encodings: do we need binary at all?
- To: bsimpson%morningstar.com@bnr.ca
- Subject: Re: encodings: do we need binary at all?
- From: "marcus (m.d.) leech" <mleech@bnr.ca>
- Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 19:44:22 -0500
- Cc: spki%c2.org@bnr.ca
- In-Reply-To: <4967.bsimpson@morningstar.com>
- Organization: Nortel Technologies, System Security Services
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> Meanwhile, put me in the camp that hates ASN.1. Worse than worthless,
> from a strict implementation and debugging perspective.
>
I don't think that TLV is necessarily a bad thing, but certainly ASN.1
is an elephantine mess. Consider that one of its EARLY (ca 1988)
formal specifications is over 400 pages. Consider the BNF specification
for ANSI C is 6 pages! The "standard reference text" for ANSI C is,
including the BNF and index, 272 pages.
The problem I have with ASN.1 is that it seems to have been developed
by a committee in which anyone who had ever described or encoded any
type of needlessy-ornate structure got to have support in the language for
it.
But I digress. The IETF community needs a good way of describing
protocol elements, and that isn't necessarily as bit-layouts
enclosed in collections of '+' '-' and '|'. This isn't necessarily
the working group where such a thing should be invented :-) :-)
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--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Marcus Leech Mail: Dept 4C16, MS 238, CAR
Systems Security Architect Phone : (ESN) 395-4901 (613) 763-9145
Systems Security Services Fax : (ESN) 393-7679 (613) 763-7679
Nortel Technologies mleech@bnr.ca
-----------------Expressed opinions are my own, not my employers------
References: