[CM] vim2grace - vim (or other external editor) integration with Grace

[cmdist at nospam.frostglow.com]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 09:37:23AM -0500, Heinrich Taube wrote:
> 
> im wondering if -- instead of providing a separate 'cm' binary for
> console work -- i instead add an 'eval server' to Grace?

This sounds like it should solve the vim2grace background processing
problem I just described.  And since I think I'd mostly be using
Grace through the intermediary of a program like vim2grace anyway,
I would be pretty happy with that.

Those users who don't want to use vim2grace would still need some
other way to connect to Grace's eval server if they wanted to
use Grace from the console.  One solution could be to have a
the cm binary be just a simple console-only frontend to Grace's
eval server.

> that way one could start Grace and then send text to its port for
> evalling from other apps.

What kind of port do you envision using?  A TCP/IP port?  A unix socket?
Something else?

> It would sure make things a lot more robust  as it would be exactly
> like typing into grace's editor.  and certainly less difficult to
> maintain from my end!

I think this is a legitimate architecture, and it makes a lot of sense
if your main focus of development is Grace.

However, for those users who prefer to use a console-only app, it might
make more sense to have the core features be present in cm, and have the
Grace GUI be an optional addon built on top of cm.  In that model, it
would probably make more sense to have cm provide an eval server that's
used by Grace, rather than the other way around.

But I can appreciate how implementing this latter architecture would be
more work, and can understand your reluctance to go that route.

 --Sergey