Forum OpenACS Development: Re: ad_form widget for textareas

To prove the concept I put one of the above controls into edit-this-page in about 20 minutes.

The one I picked, htmlArea, uses a BSD licence and is for IE5.5 only but has an alpha version for Mozilla 1.3 which I didn't look at. I'm sure all the others including Malte's suggestion are similar.

To put this into ETP I did the following:

Get the htmlArea zip file and unzip into /web/yourserver/www/htmlarea

In etp-master.tcl add the following


set header_stuff "<script language=\"Javascript1.2\"><!-- // load htmlarea
_editor_url = \"/htmlarea/\";                     // URL to htmlarea files
var win_ie_ver = parseFloat(navigator.appVersion.split(\"MSIE\")\[1\]);
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Mac')        >= 0) { win_ie_ver = 0; }
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Windows CE') >= 0) { win_ie_ver = 0; }
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Opera')      >= 0) { win_ie_ver = 0; }
if (win_ie_ver >= 5.5) {
 document.write('<scr' + 'ipt src=\"' +_editor_url+ 'editor.js\"');
 document.write(' language=\"Javascript1.2\"></scr' + 'ipt>');
} else { document.write('<scr'+'ipt>function editor_generate() { return false; }</scr'+'ipt>'); }
// --></script>
"

In etp-master.adp add the following line (I added it just after <master>)


<property name="header_stuff">@header_stuff@</property>

In etp-edit.tcl change the line:


    set widget "<textarea name=\"$attribute\" $html>[ad_quotehtml $value]</textarea>\n"

to look like this:


    set widget "<textarea name=\"$attribute\" $html>[ad_quotehtml $value]</textarea>\n
    <script language=\"JavaScript1.2\" defer>
      editor_generate('$attribute');
      </script>"

I'm not 100% about some of the templating stuff so it may not be the best way to modify pages

That's it. To see it working with IE5.5 or greater go to: http://lin.alatto.com:8086/news-test and login as test@test.com with a password of test

I think some of the other controls are better and some worse (e.g. in how they handle tables or images) but I think they're all pretty easy to integrate so it's a case of deciding on what one is the best.