[Zope] External Editor Doesn't Work with Firefox

30 Apr 2007

      I have External Editor (zopeedit-win32-0.9.3.exe
<http://www.plope.com/software/ExternalEditor/zopeedit-win32-0.9.3.exe> )
installed on my WinXP machine.  It works fine with my IE6 browser.  But with
Firefox 2.0, it doesn't.  

Specifically, with the ZMI running in Firefox, what happens is:

1.	I get the stubby pencil icons on editable Zope objects. 
2.	Clicking on the stubby pencils brings up that page in my selected
external editor (currently Dreamweaver, but I have tried this with other
tools and the results are the same).  So far, so good. 
3.	But when I save changes from the external editor, the changes don't
make it back into Zope, and they don't show up on the rendered pages.  

a.	The changes do show up in the temp file that the external editor
saves to.  So the problem is not with the external editor's file saving
abilities. 
b.	No error messages occur.  
c.	So the problem must be that the EE helper app is not picking up the
changes, or is not getting them back to Firefox. 

My hunch is that I have failed to execute the following step in the External
Editor's Windows installation instructions
(http://www.plope.com/software/ExternalEditor/install-win32):  "You can also
register it (zopeedit.exe) with other browsers directly."  The reason I
haven't done this step is that I can't figure out how to register a helper
app in Firefox.  After a lot of Googling etc, I'm still stuck.

The only clue (or not) I have to offer is that the file "C:\Documents and
Settings\Ken\Application
Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\uhpuzmf9.default\mimeTypes.rdf", which
apparently is the operative Firefox configuration file, has these relevant
(?) entries:

<RDF:Description
RDF:about="urn:mimetype:externalApplication:application/x-zope-edit"

                   NC:path="C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Dreamweaver
MX\Dreamweaver.exe"

                   NC:prettyName="Dreamweaver.exe" />

<RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:mimetype:handler:application/x-zope-edit"

                   NC:alwaysAsk="false"

                   NC:saveToDisk="false"

                   NC:useSystemDefault="false"

                   NC:handleInternal="false">

    <NC:externalApplication
RDF:resource="urn:mimetype:externalApplication:application/x-zope-edit"/>

  </RDF:Description>

<RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:mimetype:application/x-zope-edit"

                   NC:description=""

                   NC:value="application/x-zope-edit"

                   NC:editable="true">

    <NC:handlerProp
RDF:resource="urn:mimetype:handler:application/x-zope-edit"/>

  </RDF:Description>

<RDF:li RDF:resource="urn:mimetype:application/x-zope-edit"/>

~ TIA

~ Ken

[Zope] External Editor Doesn't Work with Firefox

Ken Winter