> 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.
>
>... stuff deleted
>
> After all, if you were desperate you could just fire up a terminal program
> and get the raw data and try to interpret it...
Yes, but if I follow my postings correctly Bill has (a) a program that can
give him hints... [no, I'm not asking for a copy since he's in non-disclosure]
I had two senior CIS students working on the reverse-engineering aspect last
term (Spring 1992) and they were unable to determine a valid delimiter for
messages. Yes, its easy to capture the stream and look the binaries, octals,
hexes, etc. but that's as far as we got.
I also called Xpress several years ago when we first attempted to undertake
this task. While I don't have the name of who I spoke to at that time it
probably was Mike Buehl. And yes, I also was strongly discouraged from
undertaking any development effort to process their data stream even for
my own internal use.
A final note... Xpress is really missing the boat on this. Use of bulletin
board systems for local delivery of information is becoming so prevalent that
you would think they would help with the process (within their legal bounds).
I'm sure there is revenue here for them. Maybe they aren't interested in
increasing their profits?
Se La Vie
Lewis Dreblow - DREBLOW@VAX.MUSKINGUM.EDU