A couple of comments: this is for TAPx::Parser and one of the requirements is to have nothing which prevents it from installing in a fresh Perl install (i.e., no external dependencies), that means POE and friends are out of the question. Even if I make them optional, that doesn't solve my root problem :)

As for the plumbing loop, while I do like that idea, this thing is rapidly becoming far more complex than desired. Too many layers of indirection/abstraction are going to make this unmanageable. Already I have one major design flaw because of this problem and it's slowing down development. I might consider this option if I have no choice, but for now, I just want to pull from a stream. However, comments that others are making are rapidly convincing me that the synchronization issue can't be solved downstream. I do, however, have ideas on how to solve that little nit.