RE: Syntax Survey Version 2

["Ramsay, Ron" <Ron.Ramsay@ca.com>]

Steven,

Its purpose, I think, is to say "this is an ASN.1 (open) type."

It might be useful as an "abstract" syntax in the sense that one could
define certificate syntax by inheritance. That is, instead of the view that
all occurrences of binary could be replaced by more specific syntaxes, one
could inherit all ASN.1 types from binary.

Not very useful, though.

Ron.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Legg [mailto:steven.legg@adacel.com.au]
Sent: Tuesday, 3 April 2001 17:27
To: Ramsay, Ron
Cc: ietf-ldapbis@OpenLDAP.org
Subject: RE: Syntax Survey Version 2



Ron,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ietf-ldapbis@OpenLDAP.org
> [mailto:owner-ietf-ldapbis@OpenLDAP.org]On Behalf Of Ramsay, Ron
> Sent: Friday, 30 March 2001 18:14
> To: steven.legg@adacel.com.au; 'Kurt D. Zeilenga'
> Cc: ietf-ldapbis@OpenLDAP.org
> Subject: RE: Syntax Survey Version 2
> 
> 
> I don't think binary syntax ever required ;binary to be 
> specified. If you
> now require it, I think it will be a change to the spec.

Well if that's not part of the spec then the Binary syntax
might as well be dropped because it isn't providing any
useful information to an Attribute Type Description.

Regards,
Steven

> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven Legg [mailto:steven.legg@adacel.com.au]
> Sent: Friday, 30 March 2001 12:13
> To: 'Kurt D. Zeilenga'
> Cc: ietf-ldapbis@OpenLDAP.org
> Subject: RE: Syntax Survey Version 2
> 
> 
> 
> Kurt,
> 
> Kurt Zeilenga wrote: 
> > At 05:23 PM 3/28/01 +1000, Steven Legg wrote:
> > >The Binary syntax seems to be used in RFC 2798 as a catch-all
> > >for attributes with a definite ASN.1 syntax but no LDAP string
> > >encoding. Used in this way, labelling an attribute definition
> > >with the Binary syntax is really only saying that the attribute
> > >has to be requested and returned using the ;binary 
> attribute option.
> > 
> > Right.  I think the Binary syntax needs to be clarified
> > that it has no LDAP string encoding and should be transferred
> > using the ;binary (or other) transfer option.
> 
> We really need to fix the transfer to being ;binary (in the current
> absence of any alternative). If different attributes with the Binary
> syntax have different default transfer encodings then we might as
> well throw out the Binary syntax because it would then be telling us
> nothing useful about the attribute's syntax or the encoding.
> 
> Cheers,
> Steven
>