SSL, not HTTPS

[Tarh]

What are the options for creating an SSL connection without being forced to wrap HTTP (I'd like to wrap a different protocol)?

One additional sticky point: a client SSL certificate is required.

Is the only option to use the ssl:// context with fsockopen and setting SSL context options? Is CURL capable of accepting raw, non-HTTP input and output? Should a different language be used?

If there's more than one way, what is the "best" in terms of readability? Efficiency? Extensibility?

Thanks for your input.

[crmalibu]

I've never used it, but have you seen this?
http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.openssl.php

[Tarh]

I noticed it but didn't look too closely at it since I missed the fact that it supports encryption/decryption of arbitrary strings.

So, used in conjunction with a standard TCP fsockopen these OpenSSL functions could be used to implement an SSL client manually, correct? I'm guessing that this will be less efficient than using the built-in ssl:// stream, but it's good to know that there's a last resort if advanced SSL techniques need to be used. Thanks for the find!