New subject: [Zope] MS FrontPage Extensions?

3 May 2000

      Hi all,

   Has anyone done anything with integrating MS FrontPage with Zope?  I
know it sounds kind-of bad... but I'm getting desperate.  :)  We have
several departments here that have non-techy people needing to maintain
mostly static web pages... but I'd like to give them some additional
pre-built dynamic Zope products they can easily plug into their sites too.

   So, in short, I would like to let them publish from FrontPage to Zope.

   Several problems immediately crop up:

   MS FrontPage makes extensive use of what it calls "private" directories
(directories whose names begin with "_").  Zope cannot handle objects whose
id's begin with "_" because of Python's naming conventions.  Soooooooooo... 
when you try to publish a MS FrontPage "web" to Zope you get errors.  

   There are other little irritations which would be nice to solve, like:
changing the default document from index.htm to index_html, making use of 
standard_html_header and standard_html_footer, and making the server side 
extensions work.

   To solve some of these problems I created a Windows python script
which takes a published MS FrontPage "web" and fixes/ftp's it to Zope.
So, a person can use MS FrontPage and edit their pages.  When they're
done, they can publish to a directory on their local hard drive.  Then
they run this little python script which does the following:

  1.  Renames any files or directories beginning with "_" to a name that
      does not begin with "_".

  2.  Edits all html pages, changing links to files/dirs renamed in step #1.

  3.  Renames index.htm to index_html  (*)

  4.  Strips off all html outside the <BODY>...</BODY> tags, replacing it 
      with <dtml-var standard_html_header> and <dtml-var standard_html_footer>
      and keeping some HEAD tags in a separate file called "additional_header"
      (which can then be optionally included by the standard_html_header)

  5.  FTP's all files and associated directories to a Medusa (Zope ftp server)

(*) To keep step #3 from breaking links, add an index.htm method high in
    the object hierarchy which simply calls index_html

   So far this approach seems to work quite well.  Now I would like to add
functionality for some of the MS FrontPage server-side extensions.  Several
of the SSE's seem to be almost trivial to convert into equivalent Zope dtml.
Others seem more complex.

   General questions:

1.  Has anyone gotten MS Frontpage and Zope to talk any other way?
2.  Does this approach seem like a good idea?
3.  Has anyone created Zope replacements for SSE's?  ...or similar products?
4.  Is there any interest in this?  (i.e. would anyone like to help?)

   Please email me if you're interested or would like a copy of the script.  
If there's enough interest, I'll summarize the responses back to the list.

Cheers,
John

-- 
..........................................................
John Ash, R & D Manager     |  Phone:  (509) 527-2993 
Information Services        |    FAX:  (509) 527-2008
Walla Walla College         |  Email:  ashjoh@wwc.edu
College Place, WA  99324    |  http://www.wwc.edu/~jash

MS FrontPage Extensions?

John Ash

Dimitris Andrakakis

Michel Pelletier

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participants (3)