[lobster_johnson]

Thanks for telling me about ApplySyntax. So that solves one problem. But that search plugin is not "live". It lets you edit and apply (once, apparently).

I'm not at all new to Python. Forking processes is simple enough, the problem is about how Sublime manages the plugin thread; you have to jump through hoops with sublime.set_timeout() etc. At the time, I was having huge issues waiting for a process and then afterwards interacting with the editor; it seemed buggy. I'm sure it's possible given enough trial and error.