Need some help programming against the telnet interface

[Drawmly]

Hi I've run into some problems while using the telnet interface of VLC. What I wanna do is a program that runs on my computer (in C++) that sends commands for VLC, like pause play etc. I've previously constructed my own network classes that works great, sending just ASCII signs in sequence finishing with a 10 to signal end of packet. Now I thought telnet was just this, ASCII signs in sequence, but turns out after testing my classes together with VLC and PuTTY and logging ASCII signs sent that there seems to be an overhead of additional data being sent in telnet packets. Using my own classes I receive the first message "VLC XXX" over telnet, followed by some weird smilies. And when I try sending the password back it doesn't accept it.

I've tried googling around looking for an answer to this. It seems the only answer I get is "read the RFC 854", however I tried doing that but it didn't say much that I understood. I've also looked up open source telnet clients but they contain so much code and I haven't found any that are object-oriented programmed really, and would take me days to decipher the information I want. So therefor I turn to you guys. Do you have any tips / pointers on how I can solve this? What would be great is either a simplification of the telnet protocol and what overhead I need to add to my packets, or a telnet client designed to be implemented via an API that's free to use, so that I can simply implement that in my code and use that.

Thanks in advance.