As a compiler vendor I have a vested interest in supporting SMIng in
whatever form it takes, but not settling the ASN.1-like vs. New Grammar
issue seems to me to be a little detrimental to the SMIng effort. More
recent discussions seemed to be based around the idea that SMIng would
continue to be ASN.1-like, which I think is unfortunate.
There are many reasons for preferring or not preferring things related
to ASN.1, and I have to admit to being on the opposite side to Michael -
surprise, surprise! But I hope that everybody realises that ASN.1
(standards and tools) now provides the ability to generate both compact
binary encodings *and* XML documents from *the same* ASN.1
specification. Of course, it should be "proper" ASN.1, not a bastardised
version, in order to maximise use of existing tools.