Yes, but reverse-engineering the data would not be horribly difficult,
especially having a program available that can (a) give you hints as to
what a particular data is and (b) act as a test suite for your idea of how
the protocol worked.
If the extended services are there and simply not accessible from the basic
software, then I don't see how X*Press can claim that they're extended
services. If they're encrypted, that's another thing, but I don't see any
reason for someone not to figure out the protocol and write a nice interface.
After all, if you were desperate you could just fire up a terminal program
and get the raw data and try to interpret it...
In any case, I'm not sure what the best course of action is. Because of the
non-disclosure agreement that was signed for my developer's guide, I don't
think I can participate in a netwide development effort, even though the
agreement is in questionable legal standing. Even giving 'hints' to other
developers might put me on shaky moral ground... I wish I had the actual
document that was signed, but I think that got lost years ago.
-- Bill Fenner fenner@jazz.psu.edu ..psuvax1!hogbbs!wcfpc!wcf wcf@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (+1 814 238-9633 v.32bis)