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Such a protocol is already in place - the lua console.
Why not use that? It is not enabled by default, non-power users don't use it (and probably aren't even aware of it, or what to do with it). It's pretty much a perfect fit, and it would avoid complicating the code base.

"Lua" is not a protocol

Edit: To elaborate a bit on this, before your inevitable backlash strikes:

A protocol needs a few things to be called a protocol. At least the following things are required:

• a formal definition. This can be prose, code, pseudocode, flowcharts, etc.
• special attention to interoperability between different implementations (i.e. windows vs linux, 32 vs 64 bit, big endinan vs. little endian, etc.)
• At least two working "proof-of-concept" implementations that show that (and how) the protocol works.

True, you can do all these using the Lua interpreter in MAME (just as well you can use C/C++ to implement it), but simply stating "just use Lua!" is nothing even remotely similar to a "protocol".

I think when OG asked you to propose a protocol he wanted you to come up at least with the above mentioned points.

Semantically, no.
But for all practical intents and purposes, yes - you could treat it like a protocol, in this case.
It sends and receives input, using an established standard.

Right?

Why not. I don't remember lua being able to access stdin and I think it's initialized relatively late, but I'm sure you can fix that. It would have the advantage of every frontend being able to implement whichever functionality it wants. We'll await your PRs.

OG.

lua can access stdin, you can send commands to it.

Ok, will do.

BGFX actually relies on SDL or DXGI passing it a window handle. In fact, I think I said much the same thing the last time someone came up with something like this.

I was wondering, can you pass window handles between applications on windows or on osx? I know it's possible on linux (but you need to have opened the window in GL mode for bgfx/opengl iirc).

OG.

It works in Windows too. Many applications use it to "embed" other applications' window into their own UI. A non-gaming-related example is PuTTY and its various front-ends (SuperPuTTY and whatnot) but it (reportedly) also works for GL-enabled windows which is often used by "overlay"-type software (I think there's even a flag that can be passed to SDL which makes it attach to that window instead of creating its own. It's been a few years since I last used such features though)

Window embedding and all that stuff is another discussion entirely though, and not what I'm going for, personally.

I used to experiment with embedding MAME in the frontend back with Qt4 (Qt5 doesn't have that functionality anymore), but iirc it didn't work all that well, and impacted performance negatively.

Besides, on Linux, it isn't really necessary anyway - there are plenty of different window managers available, and many of them offer advanced configuration on a per-window basis, so you have total control over MAME's or any other window.

And then there's Wayland, which isn't widely adopted yet, but shows a ton of promise and is much nicer than the archaic X11 to develop for.

Of course this doesn't do Windows or Mac users any good.