Ian,
I couldn’t get the text you first posted to import into Node-red but the file you uploaded worked like a charm. You mentioned that the text file was a notepad file so I’m guessing you use a Windows system. Are you familiar with WinSCP?
http://winscp.net/eng/docs/introduction
With it you can easily copy files between the Raspi and your windows system. You could export a Node-red flow to the “library” in Node-red then copy the resulting .json file from /home/pi/node-red/lib/flows on the Pi to your Windows system for transfer to the forum or send via email etc. It would work in the other direction as well.
Your plan to develop a plugin for ospi is the way to go. It would allow someone to add these features to an installation without worrying about which distribution of the main program to use. I have not had time to document the plugin system yet but I plan to work on that in the next few weeks. in the mean time there is a little info on the wiki:
http://rayshobby.net/mediawiki/index.php/Python_Interval_Program_for_OSPi
And of course you can always ask questions here and I will try to help. That will also help me with the documentation.
Dan