From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 18:27:44 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: going back to stone axes
Message-ID: <199603010951.BAA22486@ix16.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 02:32 PM 3/1/96 +1100, Steven Legg <s.legg@trl.telstra.com.au> wrote:
>DistinguishedName wasn't defined the way it was because of ASN.1. 

I'd always assumed it was just the ugly X.400 email naming convention.

>No one at Telstra Research would want to replace DistinguishedName with
>a byte string because of all the constant reparsing, cutting and splicing
>that would entail. We would end up writing more code, not less. Given the
>sort of heavy duty processing we do to DNs, trying to pack a DN into a
>string is considered brain dead. Those rich semantics matter to us.

I don't see how a DN is any better than an Internet-style Domain Naming Service
name, except that it puts a bunch of pre-defined labels on subdomain parts
which can generally be guessed from context and aren't very relevant
to computer programs.  Compare
        joeuser@purchasing.fnord.edu.au
vs.     /FN=Joseph/Ln=User/NN=Joe/OU=Purchasing/O=First.National.Organization.-
[for].Research.[and].Development/S=Academic/C=AU/

Is there really any additional information in the latter, except possibly
some detail you could have looked up with a "whois" request?

#--
#				Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com / billstewart@attmail.com +1-415-442-2215
# http://www.idiom.com/~wcs     Pager +1-408-787-1281