Why is OSS.LINKED not supported for BIT STRINGs in TOED (time-optimized encoder/decoder)?

In 1989, when Intel CPUs 16-bit segmented address space and 1MB DOS/Windows machines were the norm, we needed to provide a means of encoding BIT Strings, OCTET Strings, etc, that were each up to 12MB long for certain protocols (e.g., MHS). We did this by allowing the use of the LINKED directive on string types, which allowed applications to handle huge strings locally in small chunks (a LINKED list) where the individual pieces (nodes) were stored either in "expanded memory", "extended memory" or in files.

When we implemented the time-optimized encoder/decoder (TOED) several years later we chose not to support the LINKED directive on string types since at that point the 32-bit Intel CPUs and OS's that used flat address space had become the norm. We maintain support of the LINKED directive on the string types in the space-optimized encoder/decoder (SOED) for backward compatibility reasons, but in all additions to the basic product (e.g., TOED, IAAPI) and in all new products (e.g., LED, ossPrintPER()), we don't support outdated features such as representation of BIT Strings as a linked list of nodes.

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