the retention of the certificate format might make processing easier
(especially for folks who have to hand code ASN routines?).
I'm confused about the concern for implementors who "hand code" ASN.
Why overload the Certificate type with information that is going to be
ignored? A basic PEM processing application decodes certificates and
names. In the "generate certification request" subroutine where
encoding is necessary, wouldn't it be simpler to write shorter code
which simply wraps a name with a public key?
Also, I used to worry about overloading the MIC-ONLY process type for
both signed messages and certification requests. As an implementor, I
wanted to be able to let the user open a message and show the user
exactly what type of message that file is. The new certification
process type makes this possible.
- Jeff