Please get real.
BER is a part of ASN.1.
DER is a part of ASN.1. It is an afterthought - in the meaning of
"being thought of afterwards" - to BER. Check your dates!
PER *will be* a part of ASN.1 once ISO ratifies it (it is still DIS,
according to http://www.iso.ch/cate/d16296.html)
Regional workshops are a lousy idea because the partition into problem
areas (which *might* be a good idea) does not follow regional boundaries
at all, and the number of ASN.1 experts in the world who can stomach
profiling work is smaller than the number of profiling comittees.
It is impossible to do *anything* with an abstract value; I think Jeff's
comment was about specs in the style of the IP documents (which have a *long*
history of computing checksums over stuff).
Harald A