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EPOZ

	Product name EPOZ Description WYSIWYG editor for DTML Methods/Documents or Plone/CMF Release Date 2003/07/03 Version 0.5.1 (Stable) Rating (all ratings are on scale of 1-5 with 5 sushi being the best) Usability Software Design Documentation Usefulness Categories WYSIWYG editor Size 24,564 bytes Requirements CMF or Plone (only if intended to be used with either) Only works with: IE >= 5.5 Mozilla >= 1.3.1 Netscape >= 7.1 Creator Maik Jablonski License ZPL URL Download Packaged as Zope Product

Pros
easy to install and use
especially useful for Plone/CMF

no option to change the font within an edited text
insufficient description of how to use EPOZ with other objects such as ZPTs

Many solutions created with ZOPE are Content Management Systems (CMS). They facilitate the creation and editing of content which most of the time consists of text. The people who in the end are going to use the CMS are most likely not programmers but editors who may not know HTML very well. So-called WYSIWYG editors ("What You See Is What You Get") are useful for these people so that they can edit their texts just as they would with a common word processing application such as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.

IThe WYSIWYG editor EPOZ is simple yet it offers most of the text editing features that one needs to create a formatted text. It is mostly written in Javascript and uses an iframe (inline frame). Since it makes use of Rich Text Features which are not supported by every browser and especially not by older browsers, it only works with newer versions, namely IE >= 5.5, Mozilla >= 1.3.1 and Netscape >= 7.1.

The editor can be used either to edit DTML Methods or DTML Documents in Zope or as an additional content editor for Plone (Fig. 1).

Using EPOZ in Zope requires the user to create an additional DTML Method (the source code for which is provided by the author in the product's README file). This DTML Method, e.g. called 'edit' (the name is supplied by the user but 'edit' makes sense), is used on other DTML Methods and DTML Documents, for example 'index_html', as follows:

Figure 1 - Changing the content editor in Plone to EPOZ

http://localhost:8080/Folder/index_html/edit

It contains the inline frame that presents the editing features of EPOZ and the source code of the DTML Method or DTML Document which 'edit' is then used on. The result is similar to what you see in Fig. 2 below, without the Cascading Style Sheet look that is part of Plone.

EPOZ features the following editing options:

• character formatting (bold, underlined, cursive)
• pre-formats (Heading 1, Heading 2, …)
• subscripts and superscripts
• text color and background color
• -paragraph aligning (left, right, center)
• ordered and unordered lists
• hyperlinks
• images
• horizontal lines
• tables
• Undo and Redo functions

There is also a checkbox for changing from edit mode to html mode so that it is possible to edit the text directly in HTML.

In order to use EPOZ with Plone, it has to be integrated into Plone. This is facilitated by an Install method provided by the author (the README file explains how to use this method by means of an External Method). After correctly integrating EPOZ into Plone, any Plone user can choose EPOZ as his or her content editor (see Fig. 1).

Figure 2 - The EPOZ content editor in Plone, with examples of some of the formatting possible

Clicking either the text color or the background color icon (6th and 7th from the left in the toolbar), pops up a color chart (Fig. 3) containing the standard Web colors.

Figure 3 - Color chart for text and background color

EPOZ offers various protocols for the hyperlinks (Fig. 4), such as the standard 'http', 'https', 'ftp' and 'mailto', as well as 'file', 'gopher', 'news', 'telnet', 'wais' and 'other'.

Figure 4 - Adding a Hyperlink

When using EPOZ with Plone, you also have the option of inserting links to images or documents by browsing through your Plone member area (Fig. 5). This pop-up window is the toolbox (third icon from the right in the editor) that comes with EPOZ.

Figure 5 - Browsing through your Plone member area

Obviously, you cannot use this toolbox when using EPOZ in your standard Zope because there is no member area. But you can create your own toolbox by creating a Zope object, e.g. a DTML Document, which works similarly. The author gives an example of how to do this in the README file.

As mentioned above, the work in the background is done in Javascript. The Javascript code is documented, with short descriptions of each function and sometimes comments for single lines or code blocks, for clarification.

Although the author says in the README file that EPOZ can also be used with ZPTs and Python Scripts, the description of how to do so is too short. It would have been nice if there had been a more detailed explanation of how to adapt EPOZ for other Zope objects.

All in all, EPOZ is an easy to install and easy to use WYSIWYG editor. It provides the most needed functions for character editing and text formatting. It would be nice if there were also the option to change the font of the edited text. The product as delivered can only be used with DTML Documents and Methods but according to the author it can be adapted to work with ZPTs, Python Scripts and within one's own Products. Following the author's (rather short) description I attempted to use EPOZ for ZPTs but was not successful. It is quite useful within Plone or CMF.