🚀 go-pugleaf

> I guess we need an "ISO standards FAQ" with this question answered and
> mailed weekly to a number of newsgroups.
	Yes, that would probably be appropriate... particularly given
the number of us used to having RFC's and IETF working papers online.
(It is extremely useful to wais-search (or even grep) for a particular
concept, such as "out of band messages" and find the standards that
refer to it...)
	I suppose I should withdraw my earlier reference to the
"European" network standards process when refering to ISO, thanks to
the gentle correction of another reader (who pointed out that ANSI is
an ISO member :-) ANSI standards aren't available online either, I've
heard this is also because they make back operating expenses by
charging for them. (I've never heard "tampering risk" suggested
seriously as a reason not to publish them in electronic form -- if
you consider it a threat, you can either put them up yourself (or get
other parties you trust to do it) or simply put some sort of digital
signature on the document.)
	I did receive a pointer to a doc that satisfied my original request:
>> The file ASN.1.ps.Z on ftp.uni-erlangen.de in pub/doc/ISO/english
>> contains an introductory text about ASN.1 and the basic encoding rules.
	This paper is "A Layman's Guide to a Subset of ASN.1, BER, and
DER" by Burton S. Kaliski Jr. of RSA DSI; it is written with an
emphasis on parts of ASN.1 needed to implement the PKCS standards.  It
refers to CCITT X.208 and X.209, not to the ISO documents -- perhaps
the above mentioned FAQ should explain the meaning of the distinction
between CCITT and ISO. (Erik Naggum's description of the two groups
was clear, but it didn't explain why the CCITT makes recommendations
in the first place, or which direction the standards flow...)
	Thanks for your patience. I suspect these questions are coming
up more often (from American developers, at least) due to the growing
use of SNMP, RSA PEM, and Kerberos version 5, specifications for which
are freely available yet which rest on ASN.1 in particular which is
not.
				_Mark_ <eichin@athena.mit.edu>
				MIT Student Information Processing Board