[Zope] [alpha] Allaire Homesite integration with Zope

[Ben Schochet]

Are you a Homesite 4.5.1 user that wants an integrated Zope editing environment? 

Please try out my very preliminary attempt at integrating these two great products http://www.zope.org/Members/bens/homesite_editor_for_zope. This is a very early attempt at making a full-fledged dtml editor. This will allow you to edit Zope files through FTP with dtml color highlighting, dtml validation, dtml wizards, attribute inspectors and more. I think you will find that even in this early stage this will help your Zope productivity. I have a huge list of To-Do items for these extensions that will make Homesite as good an editor for Zope as it is for Cold Fusion. 

Need for easy Zope editor
While the ability to edit dtml document through the web is great, I have found the lack of ability to create dtml files in my favorite html editor disappointing. Homesite is the undisputed editor of choice for most client side web developers (on windows). It has great support for html, css, js, and a bunch of flavors of xml. I started this project enthusiastically with the goal of making dtml a first class citizen on Homesite. 

Community project:
Because of the demands on my time and the large list of features that need to be added to this project I’m hoping for a lot of help from the community. As a user I want this project complete as soon as possible. Which is why I am releasing this less than half finished project very prematurely so we can all spin some Open Source magic together. Please send me your thoughts at bens@killersite.com.

Everyone can contribute:
This project needs help with graphic design, html production, JavaScript and css, and of course Zope programming. Also putting together documentation and help screens from the vast body of Zope literature. I have big plans for this and could use all the help you can give.

Benefit to the Zope community:
A better Zope development environment might draw the “Site Builders” of the world to Zope. Currently most are creating sites with inferior technologies like Cold Fusion and ASP because of their good developer tools and familiarity of the development interface. I think the majority of web developers are afraid of seemingly complicated technologies like Zope. Our effort could create the tool that allows people with limited development experience to give Zope a try.

Please try it out and send me feedback, comments, and suggestions. 
Thanks.
-Ben Schochet.

http://www.zope.org/Members/bens/homesite_editor_for_zope

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