Steve,
I would like to second this observation (as I'm sure you knew I
would).
I had to do some ASN.1 just recently and ended up writing an
ASN.1-subset-to-C compiler (intelligent macro expander, really). The
resulting C code dwarfs the application which calls it, both in source and
binary. It's sad. This may help explain why PEM is as big as it is,
compared to other e-mail encryption programs.
The text solution was quite good. It's also what John Warnock
preached for years. I picked it up when I worked for him. (This is why
PostScript files are text, BTW. Postscript has become flawed (e.g., by
the introduction of comments which go to the end of line) but it was/is
clearly a winner -- providing real interoperability.)
There may be room for a binary format for moving C structures from
one machine to another, but ASN.1 isn't it. The right format hasn't
been designed yet, as far as I know. When I get a free minute (sometime
next century) I might take a crack at it.
- Carl
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Carl M. Ellison cme(_at_)tis(_dot_)com
http://www.clark.net/pub/cme/home.html|
|Trusted Information Systems, Inc. http://www.tis.com/ |
|3060 Washington Road PGP 2.6.2: 61E2DE7FCB9D7984E9C8048BA63221A2|
|Glenwood MD 21738 Tel:(301)854-6889 FAX:(301)854-5363 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+