Zope External Editor Installation

  Installation is two-fold: 

  - Install the ExternalEditor product in Zope.

  - Install the helper application on the client(s) and configure the browser(s)

  Product Installation

    Download the archive and extract it into your Zope products directory. Then
    restart Zope. If you succeeded, you'll notice pencil icons next to the
    external editable objects in the Zope management screens.
    
  Helper Application Installation (Binary)

    The binary distribution for Windows includes everything you need to
    to install the helper application. It is precompiled to a native Windows
    executable using Python 2.2.2, Pythonwin build 152 and Py2exe 0.3.3. 
    Everything is included for you in one package.

    Just run the setup executable to install and configure the helper app
    for use with Internet Explorer. You can also register it (zopeedit.exe) 
    with other browsers directly.

    You can download the binary installer from Zope.org at::

      http://www.zope.org/Members/Caseman/ExternalEditor

  Helper Application Installation (Source)

    Dependancies: Python 2.2, Pythonwin extensions

    *Note: This configuration is for Windows 98, for easier setup on XP and
    Windows 2000, use the binary distribution*
    
    Download the helper app archive and extract into the directory where you 
    want to install it: C:\Program Files\ZopeEdit might be a good choice. 

    Once you have the help application installed, you need to configure your
    browser to fire it off appropriately. To do so, create an entry in the
    helper applications list for your browser(s) that associates the mime type
    "application/x-zope-edit" with the helper application.

    To do this for Internet Explorer and other recent browsers, you must
    register the external editor file type with Windows:

    - From the "My Computer" window, choose "Folder Options" from the "View"
      menu.

    - In the "File Types" tab, click on the "New Type" button.

    - Enter a description such as "Zope External Editor"

    - Enter an extension not otherwise used on your system (.zope is usually a
      good choice, the exact value is not important)

    - For content type (MIME) enter: application/x-zope-edit

    - Under "Actions", click on the "New" button.

    - For Action enter: Open

    - For application used, enter or browse to the path to pythonw.exe
      (wherever you installed python2.2, such as C:\Python22).
      Use quotes around the path if it includes spaces. Following the path to
      Python, enter the path to the helper application file, in quotes if
      needed.  Follow it with: "%1" (in quotes). On my system it looks like::

        '"C:\Python22\pythonw.exe" C:\Casey\ExternalEditor\zopeedit.py "%1"

    - Click OK.

    - Uncheck "Confirm open after download"
      
    - Click OK, you should now see your new file type.
    
  Tips
  
    The helper application can run any editor program that does not detach
    itself from the controlling process.
    
    As for editors that insist on detaching from the controlling process
    (EditPad does this by default), you need to configure them so that they do
    not detach. For EditPad you could use::

      editor = C:\Program Files\EditPadClassic\EditPad.exe /newinstance

    Check the command line options of your favorite editor to see if it
    supports this.
    
 Troubleshooting

    If the helper app won't launch try the following suggestions:
    
    - Make sure you have Pythonwin installed properly. To test this, bring up 
      the Python console and type in 'import win32api'. If it throws an
      exception, you need to install Pythonwin.

    - Netscape 4 users, add a "%s" at the end of the application command line. 
      It appears the Netscape  likes to alert you with spurious things coming
      from stderr. I'll see if I can come up with a solution to that.

    - Make sure the file type is properly configured to launch the helper app
      when it receives files of type "application/x-zope-edit".

    - Try downloading and saving the external editor data to a file manually
      (right click on the pencil icon). Then try running the helper app from 
      the command line, passing it the path to this file. If it runs, then
      there is something wrong with the browser/system configuration. If not,
      then it should output a traceback to your terminal. Email me a copy of
      this traceback, and the data file and I will try to fix it.

    - If the editor launches, but the helper app complains that it lost its 
      connection to the editor process, this is because your editor detached 
      from the parent process (the helper app). Configure the editor such that 
      it does not do this. Unfortunately, many MDI applications do this and
      cannot be configured otherwise. To solve this problem, a plug-in must
      be developed for the application. See the README file for more details.
