How would you make Zope serve up a java applet without having to run Apache just for applet serving?
Zope can serve any file, so you can of course serve Java applets from Zope. Just upload them and link to them. Remember that Java code in applets is run on the client computer, so the server does not have to know anything about it.
How hard would it be to make Zope put this type of stuff in the management pages where ever a text box is currently used to grab HTML input?
It is not very difficult. The management pages are plain HTML/DTML and could very easily be rewritten. If you are on the Windows platform, I think it makes more sense to use tools like IEMethods (mentioned by Ausum in the other post). It is designed to work as a separate type of DTMLMethod, but you can use the same code to manipulate any HTML code. I just moved the code to the Zope instance and now use it as a method that can be acquired. E.g. if it is called "edit", you can do "MyDTMLMethod/edit". On Linux (taking about the server now) you will have to repair IEMethods, as it does not care about Unix being case-sensitive with filenames. If I have more time, I will publish a patched version ... Joachim