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Maybe you can answer a question I've had about ASN.1. Long time ago, Marshall Rose had harsh things to say about the ASN.1 macro facility like "buried semantics

Maybe you can answer a question I've had about ASN.1. Long time ago, Marshall Rose had harsh things to say about the ASN.1 macro facility like "buried semantics"[1]. Do you know what he meant? [1]: https://www-sop.inria.fr/rodeo/mavros/intro-mav.html https://www-sop.inria.fr/rodeo/mavros/intro-mav.html Search for "Rose"

memling 5y ago
> Maybe you can answer a question I've had about ASN.1. Long time ago, Marshall Rose had harsh things to say about the ASN.1 macro facility like "buried semantics"[1]. Do you know what he meant? My guess is that his complaint is that MACRO semantics are not well defined and are challenging to parse with conventional compilers. I've always wondered if they were inspired in some part by LISP, since you could in principle translate them fairly readily. ROSE and SNMP are still relatively commonly-used specifications that embed macro definitions, and most of the work I've seen done with them involves actually hard-coding the output (rather than actually parsing the MACROs).
cryptonector 5y ago
Thanks for the link. Marshall Rose apparently has complaints about the ASN. MACRO facility. You don't need ASN.1 MACROs for anything in Internet protocols, and you can do without more generally anyways.
- jdougan 5y ago
  I take it that means you have no idea what Marshall was talking about.
  - cryptonector 5y ago
    Rose was talking about a feature of ASN.1 (MACROs) that was removed and replaced with the Information Object System (x.681, x.682, x.683). I'm not that familiar with the ASN.1 MACRO facility, no, because, after all, it's gone and replaced. My understanding is that the problems Rose identified led to the MACRO system being replaced -- good! So yeah, I don't really know what Rose was talking about, but I do know plenty about the x.681/682/683 specs since I've implemented a subset of them.

memling 5y ago

> Maybe you can answer a question I've had about ASN.1. Long time ago, Marshall Rose had harsh things to say about the ASN.1 macro facility like "buried semantics"[1]. Do you know what he meant? My guess is that his complaint is that MACRO semantics are not well defined and are challenging to parse with conventional compilers. I've always wondered if they were inspired in some part by LISP, since you could in principle translate them fairly readily. ROSE and SNMP are still relatively commonly-used specifications that embed macro definitions, and most of the work I've seen done with them involves actually hard-coding the output (rather than actually parsing the MACROs).

cryptonector 5y ago

Thanks for the link. Marshall Rose apparently has complaints about the ASN. MACRO facility. You don't need ASN.1 MACROs for anything in Internet protocols, and you can do without more generally anyways.

jdougan 5y ago
I take it that means you have no idea what Marshall was talking about.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  Rose was talking about a feature of ASN.1 (MACROs) that was removed and replaced with the Information Object System (x.681, x.682, x.683). I'm not that familiar with the ASN.1 MACRO facility, no, because, after all, it's gone and replaced. My understanding is that the problems Rose identified led to the MACRO system being replaced -- good! So yeah, I don't really know what Rose was talking about, but I do know plenty about the x.681/682/683 specs since I've implemented a subset of them.