[Zope-dev] Re: ZMI / JavaScript brainstorm

[Charles Y. Choi]

IMHO, much of what makes the ZMI difficult to use is due to limitations 
of the
textarea widget in a web browser (no syntax highlighting, no indentation 
support,
etc.)  

So what if there was a way to get JavaScript to take the contents of a 
textarea
widget, save that to a temporary file and then call a local editor of 
the user's
choice to edit that file.  Upon exit of the local editor, the contents 
of the file
are then put back in the textarea widget.  How would the use model work?
Hook into the right mouse button menu over the textarea widget an entry
called "Edit Contents with Local Editor".

Granted there a lots of issues here, chief among them figuring out how to
let JavaScript write data to the client machine (read security).  All 
the same,
this could let folks have the best of both worlds: ZMI for navigation,
user's local editor for editing.


Just a thought.


-Charles