>Chances are good that Zope isn't giving Emacs enough of a clue as to what kind of file you >are editting. Emacs either needs a '.' extension

Actually, what I do is name my python files myfile_py and html files myfile_html.  I tried naming my files with .py, etc but that causes problems when trying to access them in python because of the object dot notation.  So in my .emacs file I have the following

;; HTML Mode
;; ---------
(setq auto-mode-alist
      (cons '("\\_html$" . html-mode) auto-mode-alist))

;; Python mode
;; -----------
(setq auto-mode-alist
      (cons '("\\_py$" . python-mode) auto-mode-alist))

;; SQL Mode
;; --------
(setq auto-mode-alist
      (cons (cons "\\_sql$" 'plsql-mode) auto-mode-alist))

;; Font Lock Mode
;; --------------
(global-font-lock-mode t)

With files on my regular filesystem, I can load up files called myfile_py and it auto loads python mode and fontifies.

I tried the file comments and they work perfectly.  I don't care about the extra 3 lines, its worth not worrying about M-x html-mode each time.  I don't actually use dtml, I use zpt (zope page templates).  Just wondering though, what special stuff does dtml mode do for you?

>being able to hack the whole thing with >Emacs via FTP is priceless.

Totally!

Azbok