> Maybe LER should be the name of the textual format we're developing, then.
> Except it will make Lassi's marketing iinstincts go ding-ding-ding-ding.

lol. Okay, you asked for it :)

Techies often like to throw the baby out with the bathwater with
marketing concerns. In fact, a lot of it just boils down to making sense
and getting to the point.

Take "Encoding Rules" for example. How is "encoding rules" different
from "encoding"? Isn't all encoding about following rules? Instead of
"ASCII" we could say "ASCII Encoding Rules". What would be the point?

Since ASN.1 is useful solely for its encodings, we can drop "encoding"
from the names too, since what else would most users want to deal with?
Now we have "Basic ASN.1", "Distinguished ASN.1" and "Lisp ASN.1", which
are things one can read without their eyes glazing over. (Well, "ASN.1"
scans weirdly but let it be. At least it's the cool end of weird.)

I've dealt with many products of heavyweight specification processes and
the alphabet soup has always puzzled me. There's something about poring
over those specs that at some point makes ordinary people unable to
write plainly anymore. At SpaceX there used to be an "Acronyms Seriously
Suck" rule (which was of course justly shortened to the "ASS" rule). I
digress.

So these names are basically okay:

* ASN.1 Basic
* ASN.1 Packed
* ASN.1 XML
* ASN.1 JSON
* ASN.1 Lisp

These are still baffling:

* Distinguished
* Canonical
* Encoding Control Notation
* Canonical XML
* Extended XML
* Octet
* Generic String

Without knowing anything about them: "canonical", "distinguished" and
"basic" sound like they should be the same thing. "Basic" is a good
name. "Canonical" is a prankish way to say "normal". "Distinguished"
sounds like "we made some mistakes when designing 'basic'; this is what
it should have been". The fact that "basic" and "canonical" are
different is suspect. If the point of "basic" is to be lighter than
"canonical", it should be called "light" or "small" for clarity. But
those sound the same as "packed"; what's the difference? And "extended"
is a complicated way to say "large" or "heavy". Finally, "Octet" and
"Generic String" are geek-speak so opaque that even geeks have no idea
what they are, and "Encoding Control Notation" is the victory lap.

So a set of sensible names would be for example:

* ASN.1 Light
* ASN.1 Normal
* ASN.1 Heavy
* ASN.1 XML
* ASN.1 JSON
* ASN.1 Lisp

The above dissected mentality, applied top to bottom, is why even bright
people's eyes glaze over whenever they try to find out what ASN.1 is.

It gets worse when you actually go read about it:

"The key difference between the BER format and the CER or DER formats is
the flexibility provided by the Basic Encoding Rules." --- So the
"basic" thing is more flexible than the things with the fancy names.

"DER (Distinguished Encoding Rules) is a subset of BER providing for
exactly one way to encode an ASN.1 value. DER is intended for situations
when a unique encoding is needed. DER can be considered a canonical form
of BER." --- The thing with the fancy name is more basic than the
"basic" thing. And the "canonical" and "distinguished" encodings compete
over who is more canonical. It's like old Coke and new Coke.

This is why people prefer things that are "marketed". A clear message is
not a guarantee that the people behind it can think clearly, but an
confused message is a near-guarantee that the substance is equally
confused. There may be an un-confused core struggling to get out, but it
needs a great deal of help.