Replacing the werl.exe GUI, take 2

[James Hague]

I asked this question some weeks ago, but got no responses, so let me
phrase it differently:

I'd like ditch the Windows front-end to Erlang (werl.exe) and write my
own.  I've submitted patches for the GUI portion of werl.exe in the
past, and it's cumbersome to have to install cygwin and build the
whole app just to make a superficial usability change to the GUI.

Logically, this should be easy:  write my own application that starts
up werl.exe in the background, with the GUI disabled, communicating
via pipes.  Standard UNIX-fare.  Except if it were really this easy to
do under Windows, I'd expect the Erlang team would have already done
this.  So what's the catch?