ASN.1t schema languages?

Alessandro Triglia wrote:

> ASN.1.  The new XML Encoding Rules of ASN.1 are being finalized by the
> joint ISO/IEC/ITU-T standards group.  Publication is expected within a
> few months.
> 
> The language allows the specification of schemas for a wide range of XML
> documents.  It takes a different view from other schema languages, in
> that it is based on the definition of an abstract data structure, whose
> "values" are *encoded* in XML.
> 
> One benefit of this model is that the "information content" of an XML
> document described by an ASN.1 schema can be immediately encoded in any
> of the standard binary Encoding Rules of ASN.1 (such as BER, DER, or
> PER) with no effort, as an alternative to XML itself, whenever size is a
> concern.  

Speaking as one who has just invested several very painful solid days 
trying to pick apart 1.3 million data records transmitted in ASN.1/BER 
(the one or two publicly available pieces of software that claimed to do 
BER silently failed to do anything, the information provider's own C 
program was idiosyncratic, failed to compile out of the box, and ran 
painfully slow), and then discovered that all the non-ASCII characters 
are hosed, I hope that this effort bears fruit.

At the moment I am about ready to categorically refuse ever to deal with 
anything that has anything to do with ASN.1. Bah.  -Tim