[asterisk-users] Unicall, not HOW but WHY

[Barzilai]

Warning: This message is a valid question, and is also kind of a [RANT] 
at the end... but I'm high on caffeine and I had fun writing it.
The ranting part more or less reflect the state of the Asterisk 
ecosystem until the end of 2005, which has been getting a little better 
but a lot of the garbage remains.
At least someone answer my questions :-)

[QuestionSection]
So, I've been reading reading, on and off, for weeks about the *proper* 
way to set up E1 in Asterisk.
I've read all the pertinent mailing list messages since year 2003 to the 
date, read everything at voip-info.org, AsteriskGuru, Google, etc.
I'm still confused.

Many questions remain, some of them are:
1) Why do the zaptel and librpi drivers and libraries pretend to 
"handle"  E1 cards, but apparently know nothing about the MFCR2 protocols?
Is there any other normal way to use the E1's (with respect to telephony)
2) Why the Unicall package? Not *how* but *why*.
3) Probably 3/4 of the world use E1 with its variants.  Why is Unicall 
not included in the regular Asterisk distribution?  Is it *really 
needed* for E1 or are there alternative ways?

[RANT]
And I could write a lot about the *hows*.
 Everything I've read can be summarized in a bunch a of cookbook 
recipies, quite often ambiguous and even contradicting themselves.

It goes more or less like this:

Hi, I've finally got it working!!   l0lz d00d!!!
1) make this and make that
2) Don't pay attention to all the CVS instructions because now they have 
changed to SVN
3) Download libXXXPr0C4llz from some mirror
4) Patch, make, edit, repatch, OMG pray!!
5) Go into zapsomething.conf and add the following to the end of the file:

# I got this one from voip-info.org/Mexican+Guy
# He uses MagicValueY but doesn't seem to work with my kernel version
# So I read the source code and found MagicValueX which seems to work at 
the moment
undocumented_param_1=MagicValueX   

# I commented this one out because it gives errors.  Don't ask me why, 
just do it!!
# (Google gives 3 hits when searching for it. Two are Japanese porn 
pages and the other one gives 404 Not Found)
# undocumented_param_2=RangeOfMagicValues

# This one is documented in three different e-mails and two blogs!!!!
# except some people use it in zapsomething.conf and other people use it 
in unicallplus.ini
# If it doesn't work for you, try 33 or 35
# DON'T USE the 36 that the Asterisk book mentions, it was already 
obsolete by the time the book hit the shelves!!!
documented_param_sigma=34

# Some people use bchan, some people use cas, some people use both, some 
people use dchan also.
# However very few people know what they mean and how they interact.
# Your mileage may vary, but nobody will know why! LOL!
cas=1-15:1001
cas=17-31:1001
#bchan=1-15:1001
#bchan=17-31:1001
dchan=16
# If you live in Chiapas or northen Kazajkstan change it to 1111. Some 
guy used 0001 and his dog died.


I'll shut up now.

BarZ