Perry,
Some (many?) of the protocols that will be employed in the PKI
environment will entail digital signatures and may also be required to
support staged delivery. Most Internet protocols do not accommodate
signatures and the attendent requirements for cannonical encoding. Thus
the bit-by-bit layout approach adopted for protocol syntax specification in
the Internet, historically, may not be the best approach in this context.
Also, we do have examples of using ASN.1 for syntax specification in the
Internet, i.e., SNMP and its accompanying MIBs.
Steve