[Ted holden]

Is it possible to have an external method return a string which would be treated by zope as a dtml page, i.e. to have the return string contain dtml commands which would execute?

It would not be good design, so I wouldn't spend any more time trying to get it to work. You should have the external method return data structures to the calling dtml page/method (or you could use TAL) that takes the data and does the final formatting. Cheers, Tom P