RE: Protest: Complexity running rampant

2007-02-27 Thread Hallam-Baker, Phillip
I don't think this is an issue worth objecting to.

Complexity exists at many levels. There is complexity of specification and 
complexity of implementation. The two are not the same.

I can imagine two reasons why I might want to have ASN.1 in XML. The first is 
that I want to use a single set of tools for data serialization and unpacking. 
This is particularly attractive if I was going to use an ASN.1 structure inside 
an XML packet. The second is if I was looking for a way to move from a legacy 
ASN.1 base to an XML base. 


As far as complexity of architecture goes neither ASN.1 not XML are to my 
taste. ASN.1 looks like a briliant idea that went into committee and got broken 
by a few participants whose political skills exceeded their technical skills. 
This is a real problem in data formats since they appear to be simple enough 
that everyone can have an opinion. 

ASN.1 is not so bad unless you have to either use the seriously derranged DER 
encoding or deal with some of the later additions to the data model. DER would 
not have been so bad if they had chosen to use indefinite length encoding for 
lists rather than definite length, thus requiring implementations to chose 
between unnecessary recursion and unnecessary memory copies.

I recently wrote an ASN.1 unpacking routine in Javascript in a few hundred 
lines. It is not that difficult (packing is another matter - ugh!).


XML syntax is not that bad either. The problems are mostly due to XML schema 
which makes the unfortunate mistake that C++ made of not jetisoning the all 
cruft from C and starting fresh. The prefix scheme is neither necessary nor 
convincing in my view. It breaks the principle that the choice of modular 
decomposition in a design should not constrain the end result.

In other words the fact that XML Encryption is built on XML Signature should 
not be visible when reading a document that is based on both.


I don't see that the 'complexity' of XML or ASN.1 is unreasonable though. The 
problems come from issues such as modularity and version control that have 
always been tricky. 

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Re: Withdrawal of Approval and Second Last Call: draft-housley-tls-authz-extns

2007-02-27 Thread Sam Hartman
Eric Rescorla has agreed to deal with the third party disclosure on my
behalf.

thanks for all the volunteers of help.


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Another disclosure on draft-housley-tls-authz-extns

2007-02-27 Thread Sam Hartman


Folks, it should be surprising to no one here that we've recieved the
following disclosure; it is a direct result of my mail yesterday.  I'd
ask the community to evaluate this potential  IPR in addition to the
disclosure from Redphone.


--- Begin Message ---
Dear Russ Housley, Mark Brown:

An IPR disclosure that pertains to your Internet-Draft entitled "Transport Layer
Security (TLS) Authorization Extensions" (draft-housley-tls-authz-extns) was
submitted to the IETF Secretariat on 2007-02-27 and has been posted on the "IETF
Page of Intellectual Property Rights Disclosures"
(https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/ipr_list.cgi). The title of the IPR
disclosure is "Eric Rescorla's statement about possible IPR claimed in
draft-housley-tls-authz-extns-07.txt belonging to IBM Corporation."

The IETF Secretariat



--- End Message ---
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Re: [Ltru] Re: Last Call: draft-mcwalter-langtag-mib (Language Ta g MIB) to Proposed Standard

2007-02-27 Thread Bill Fenner

On 2/27/07, McDonald, Ira <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Yes - from the IEEE/ISTO Printer Working Group, see the
Job Monitoring MIB (RFC 2707) which defined the textual
convention 'JmNaturalLanguageTagTC'


Ah, silly me, I forgot that I hadn't written the part that populates
the database with TCs yet.  I wrote that part and indeed found
JmNaturalLanguageTagTC.

Interestingly, I couldn't find any objects that used this TC, in
Job-Monitoring-MIB or any MIB published in an RFC.

 Bill

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Re: Protest: Complexity running rampant

2007-02-27 Thread Randy Presuhn
Hi -

> From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Fred Baker" <[EMAIL 
> PROTECTED]>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 6:45 AM
> Subject: RE: Protest: Complexity running rampant
...
> DER would not have been so bad if they had chosen to use
> indefinite length encoding for lists rather than definite length,
> thus requiring implementations to chose between unnecessary
> recursion and unnecessary memory copies.
...

There's a third approach that can be simpler to implement and
faster to execute - do the encoding *backwards*, starting at the
end of your buffer.  Then you don't need to encode the length
(and length-of-length) fields before you know their values.  That
way one can do the encoding without recursion or unnecessary
copies, and ensure that all lengths are minimal.

Randy


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