As far as I can tell, this suggested implementation should work and be compatible with the existing protocol.
This is actually another great suggestion the more I think about it now.
It reminds me of the 8.3 short/long filename. It should be okay to allow lowercase characters, numbers, and symbols for the long asset name since it will be hash and encoded into base 26 anyway.
Yes, that's basically the gist of it. Take a long asset name and fold it into a short asset name.
The benefit of the distinction between a top level and lower level asset issuance is to give a means to tier the costing of issuing assets in a simple fashion.
I'd be happy to stay with the status quo plus a defacto standard on how to craft the asset description to include a namespace as long as:
a) If we think that the current pricing model is only a short term solution until a floating fee solution is found (similar to transmission fees in Bitcoin).
b) The defacto standard is something centralized such that there is agreement in the community.