[Zope] XEmacs DTML Mode

Alastair Burt burt@dfki.de
13 Dec 2000 18:29:00 +0100


I have made many changes to my DTML Mode Howto and the associated files,
which can be found here:

  http://www.zope.org/Members/alburt/dtml_mode.html

The Howto explains how to get the benefits of Lennart Staflin's PSGML mode
when editing DTML code.  PSGML is a wonderful package for structure-based
editing of SGML and XML code.  There are menus and commands for inserting
only contextually valid tags, it will identify structural errors and help
indent the code appropriately, and attribute values can be edited via popup
menus or in a separate window.  The Howto explains how to get all of this
for editing DTML.  The technique is based on using a DTD for HTML with DTML
tags added and with some Elisp code that extends the basic SGML/HTML mode.

Since I first put this on zope.org, I have made the following changes:

    * Changed the DTDs so that they are now more consistent.

    * Changed the Elisp code to allow you to specify the enclosing element
      for a chunk of DTML+HTML code, so that the editor always knows what
      the valid tags are.

    * Added code to automatically add "-*-" mode declarations at the top of
      the file, so that on subsequent visits the file is always edited in
      dtml-mode. 

    * Added commands to swap between HTTP and FTP access of the same
      objects.  In particular, when you are editing a DTML file via FTP
      with three keystrokes you can pop to the management screen for the
      object in Emacs' W3 web browser.

This functionality comes on top of the transparent FTP access explained in
another Howto by Zope member nemeth:

   http://www.zope.org/Members/nemeth/usingEmacsWithZope

--- Alastair