#6 Support for 2 way Graphics Interface

[Martin Baker]

Although I would prefer to embed SPAD generated code into another language (see feature request #5) a second choice option would be to make it easier to have a 2-way interface to other programs.

One approach would be to make it easier for input and output formatters to communicate with external programs. It is difficult to do this at the moment and it requires a lot of specialised code, it involves a hack involving iohooks and requires a new build.

There are issues with output formatters as discussed on this page:
http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/standards/program/mycode/output/

Output formatters use the intermediate structure 'OutputForm'. This is a very messy structure, as also discussed on the page above, this structure tends to be text based. It would be good if it had better support for non-textual structures such as graphics. Of course, graphics structures can be expressed in textual form, but it would be more efficient not to have to encode as text and then parse back to required structure.

I would like to see an easier way for FriCAS to communicate with pipes.