[Asterisk-Dev] Client development...

[Boudewijn van Ingen]

Hello listmembers,

I hope I have found the proper forum to ask my questions. If not, you have 
my apologies, and I hope someone can point me to a more suitable source.

I'm currently trying to write a completely new client application for 
Asterisk, similar to GnoPhone, but for Windows and with some extra 
functionality. Or more accurately, I'm trying to build a library that can 
be used by others to build such applications for the Windows platform. The 
short term goal however is a demo-application to promote the usage of 
Asterisk (on linux) in large scale telecomms networks. It is really 
unfortunate that most managers that might decide on the money still use 
Windows on their desktops, but it is a fact. ;-)

I'm an experienced developer and have looked at the existing ports of the 
original code. But for several reasons, I have decided that it would be 
best for my needs to make a completely different design of the 
iax-libraries, this time in c++, and hopefully remaining somewhat portable.

Unfortunately, during my research I found out that there is apparently a 
distinct lack of public documentation about the iax-protocol, and the 
theories that lie behind it. But I may have missed something there...

Now, I understand that this protocol is a proprietary development (by Mark 
Spencer/Digium), but I was wondering if that was also the reason why I 
could not find any formal specification of the protocol? Am I for some 
reason not supposed to develop new software that makes use of this protocol?

I must admit that ploughing through the sources for diffent clients and 
Asterisk itself to find out the nitty-gritty details of the protocol seems 
more and more a rather daunting task to me. Although I have come a long way 
already doing just that. But from what I can see now, there are small 
differences in implementation between several clients that puzzle me 
sometimes...

I would be greatly helped by any information from more knowledgeable people 
(like I assume you all on this list are) about all the iax-protocol's 
messages, the information that they are supposed to convey and any other 
aspect of their use. So I was wondering if there really was no 
documentation at all about that???

In return for any help, as a matter of course, when I'm a bit more 
confident about my work, my code too will become available under some form 
of GPL.

TIA