Subject: RE: ASN.1 Notation

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 14:56:47 -0500

The formal spec for ASN.1 is not freely available.  There are many
"good enough" documents around.  Why was ASN.1 chosen?  Well gee, if
the WG is using X.509 it would be hard to use something else, no?

As for free ASN1 compilers, there are a couple; SNACC seems to be
the parent of two that are actively maintained, one as part of the
S/MIME freeware package, and another as part of DSTC's "oscar"
kit. There are probably others.
	/r$

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From: Diana Smetters <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 12:07:34 PST

Cryptix has the beginnings of an ASN.1->Java compiler that seems to be
under relatively current development (www.cryptix.org).

--Diana

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From: Massimiliano Pala <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 21:30:59 +0100

> kit. There are probably others.

You say using X.509 it would be hard to use something else, but I do
think it would be WORTH it. Indeed we all are working on Open Standards
for best interoperability (why else doing standards??). Why are the
ietf rfcs/draft available for free ??

Well (this is only my personal vision but I think it could be useful
to think about it) I know it is actually not applicable changing the
used ASN.1 in favour of some other (better?) standard (to be developed?)
but it will be ever worst while adopting it for almost every application ...

Something about patented/not patented talk have recently taken place
on the list about time-stamping ISO interoperability: it is a similar
problem, somehow...

We could implement a superset of the ASN.1 that do follow somhow the
currently adopted format (if it is possible due to pending patents (?)).

I hope I made myself clear dispite my english (?) ... What do you think ?

C'you,

	Massimiliano Pala ([email-masked])

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From: Timothy Fisher <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 16:05:34 -0800

IBM's alphaworks site has some great Java ASN1 tools.

www.alphaworks.ibm.com

Tim