Here is the first key to regain sanity when you are trying to run XML-RPC over SSL (on a self-signed server) using the methods on <url>
http://www.dokuwiki.org/devel:xmlrpc</url>:
$c->setSSLVerifyPeer(0);
Once you have the dokuwiki.getVersion example working, the next key is getting your parameters working:
$m = new xmlrpcmsg('wiki.getPageHTML',array(new xmlrpcval('start')));
Right now I'm up to the next insanity point,
Fault code 1=You are not allowed to read this page
This is because I don't give any permissions to "all' on my wiki. It works if I give permissions to "all". In the meantime I will use a separate namespace with permissions to "all" to test with. Ideally I would like to be able to specify a user or group to use for permissions when accessing and adding pages to the DW via XML-RPC. This could give the XML-RPC link permission to access only certain namespaces or pages, not depending on "all" access.