Greetings, all. The next round of the ESS document has been turned in to
the I-D editor, and we should see it here soon. Feel free to hold you
comments for a few days until it appears. :-)
At most there should be a comment:
-- UTF8String ::= [UNIVERSAL 12] IMPLICIT OCTET STRING
Doing so does not break the 1988 and 1997 standards which both forbid
the use of UNIVERSAL tags in type definitions in ASN.1 modules, it
makes it clear how this type is formally defined for those people who
don't know that the tag is UNIVERSAL 12, and it is convenient for
anyone whose tool does not support UTF8String to simply remove the
"--" if doing so helps their tool to properly handle UTF8String.
I made the opposite choice: the above goes in without the "--" and people
who have compilers that already know UTF8String can comment it out. I based
this on two factors:
- We're still using ASN.1 1988 as the base, and *no* 1988 compilers should
have UTF8String defined
- Few people using more modern compilers have UTF8String today since it was
just finalized a few months ago
Either way, it's up near the top of the module, and should be easy for
people to deal with one way or the other.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium