Hey. I wrote another Python implementation of Protobuf. (protopy https://gitlab.com/doodles-archive/protopy it was a while ago and haven't touched it since). I'm not saying it's better than whatever this is or that it's any good, I just post it as a proof of sorts that I'm familiar with the problem.

So, without further ado: Protobuf isn't a standard. You can't have a non-standard implementation of something that doesn't have a standard to begin with. In reality, you have Google's implementation for C++ and then everything else. Everything else was, for the most part, not written by Google. And it doesn't always align 100% with the C++ Google's stuff.

Furthermore, C++ implementation has a lot of idiosyncrasies specific to that language that can't be translated one-to-one into other languages, or, in some cases, shouldn't be, even if they could (eg. C++ implementation is all about source code generation because generating runtime entities s.a. classes in C++ is very difficult, while in languages like Python, generating classes at runtime is easy.)

Furthermore, C++ implementation has a specific way of parsing the binary payload (lazy: only the top definitions are parsed, the inner structure of messages is parsed on-demand). But, is this how every parser should behave? What if you want a SAX-like parser?

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In the hindsight, I just think that Protobuf is not a good format for writing reliable software that aims for decades of usage. We, as in the whole programming world, don't have good formats in general, and whenever we come to the point of having to use some, we either go with an existing popular but crooked or roll our own, probably also crooked. The standard you alluded to would've been great (perhaps a refinement of ASN with more attention to parser implementation, more concrete versions etc.?) But we aren't there yet, and there isn't even a work group to try and address the issue.

Protobuf-py: Protobuf for Python, without compromises