Fix external reader/writer brokenness
Fix external reader/writer brokenness

from previous checkin

Actually, looking at the actual diff, I don't think the previous version
was that much worse than what I had before. The trouble is that what I
had before was pretty broken in the same way.

jimrthy/frereth-cp,jimrthy/frereth-cp,jimrthy/frereth-common,jimrthy/frereth-cp