> Edit: would be really happy to see some good open source compilers with extensible encoding support being listed here
I think that's the reason of ASN.1 being trapped in a very restrictive space. From Olivier Dubuisson's ASN.1 -- Communication between Heterogeneous Systems, p. 86 et seq. talking about use of ASN.1 by the IETF:
> the definition of many macros and macro instances to represent semantic links instead of information object classes and information objects although no ASN.1 compiler properly takes into account the macro concept (on the other hand, no compiler of the public domain does with the information object class concept unfortunately);
In essence, ecosystem failure due to a non-existent overlap of the telecom industry (full of commercial and expensive solutions) and the Internet community (working in a standards committee that tracks pre-existing permissionless innovation distributing the standards at no cost, strongly affiliated with free software ideas) caused ASN.1 to fall by the roadside.
Now that ASN.1 is considered uncool, the ecosystem certainly won't be coming anymore, so we'll be forced to reinvent ASN.1, probably re-learning every lesson along the way.
> In essence, ecosystem failure due to a non-existent overlap of the telecom industry (full of commercial and expensive solutions) and the Internet community (working in a standards committee that tracks pre-existing permissionless innovation distributing the standards at no cost, strongly affiliated with free software ideas) caused ASN.1 to fall by the roadside.
Yep. I think this is the crux of the matter.
I don't even think it is an "uncool" thing. In a word, IMHO it's too "closed". Xml is not exactly hip, but I can find high scoring python xml libraries on snyk.io. I know that is not a very scientific metric but it's a good proxy for a bunch of things that are hard to measure.
I think even if it were "cool", it would be a struggle to get a culture to nucleate. It has the same vibe as codecs: complex, kinda arcane, too closely associated with closed source, litigious, corporate culture. It doesn't help that it is guilty by association with numerous poorly written libraries. Unless that is what you mean by "uncool".
Now that there is cbor, msgpack, cap'n proto, protobuf, thrift, and a bunch others (just in the binary space), asn.1 would have to make a really compelling argument to win out. It would need a lot more than coolness.
I think that's the reason of ASN.1 being trapped in a very restrictive space. From Olivier Dubuisson's ASN.1 -- Communication between Heterogeneous Systems, p. 86 et seq. talking about use of ASN.1 by the IETF:
> the definition of many macros and macro instances to represent semantic links instead of information object classes and information objects although no ASN.1 compiler properly takes into account the macro concept (on the other hand, no compiler of the public domain does with the information object class concept unfortunately);
In essence, ecosystem failure due to a non-existent overlap of the telecom industry (full of commercial and expensive solutions) and the Internet community (working in a standards committee that tracks pre-existing permissionless innovation distributing the standards at no cost, strongly affiliated with free software ideas) caused ASN.1 to fall by the roadside.
Now that ASN.1 is considered uncool, the ecosystem certainly won't be coming anymore, so we'll be forced to reinvent ASN.1, probably re-learning every lesson along the way.