Textpattern CMS support forum
You are not logged in. Register | Login | Help
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
Pages: 1
Using an external editor
Hi, Sorry if this is ‘old-hat’, an unapproved practice or in some other way not seen as a good thing, but, I couldn’t find, at a cursory search, any reference to this technique and so I wanted to share in case it helps anyone or anyone cleverer than me (lots of you) sees something bad about it and is kind enough to educate me.
When developing sites locally, I have wanted to use an external editor for TXP code (Forms, Pages) for some time. I already do for CSS as my CSS is included in TXP thus:
@import url('/_myfolder/style/mystyle.css');
…and then I use an external editor. But for Pages and Forms, I edit externally (in Coda) and copy/paste into the relevant TXP Form or Page.
This discipline forces me to keep a copy of each Form or Page I develop in a like-named file, external to TXP. A pain or a benefit, your mileage may vary, but for me, a benefit, as external editors offer many advantages.
So, I recently thought, “why can’t I [include] my external copies of the Forms / Pages and then edits to the external file will be reflected in TXP?”. So I just added this to a Form that usually represents most of one main Page:
<txp:php>include("_myfolder/forms/delme.php");</txp:php>
…and it worked. Hurrah!
So it looks like if I step-repeat this, I will be able to externally edit all the Forms / Pages and save, during dev/design at least, myself a lot of copy/pasting.
Does anyone know if leaving a production site operating like this would be bad/inefficient? I had assumed it might be, and so at go-live time I was going to copy back the actual code in place of the include statement.
Hope this is helpful and interested in comments — guessing perhaps I am miles behind and maybe everyone does this already and I just missed the boat ;)
Cheers, -Alan
At LAST I’ve cheerfully donated to the core devs at #TXP. I only wish I were able to give more. Thanks to the devs and ALL fellow TXPers. -A
Offline
Re: Using an external editor
Hi
For me i use a firefox extention “it’s all texte” that let edit any html field into an externat editor (like notepad++) and after i save on the editor, the html field is automatically updated, i have to clic the save button to complete the process, and that work online.
Cheers
Offline
Re: Using an external editor
Hi Dragondz, thanks for your comment about “it’s all texte” — I will look at that :) Cheers, -Alan
At LAST I’ve cheerfully donated to the core devs at #TXP. I only wish I were able to give more. Thanks to the devs and ALL fellow TXPers. -A
Offline
Re: Using an external editor
:( running into ‘robustness issues’.
Drat. Works fine for the main Form driving the main Page – if I get it working for other Forms too, or fail, I’ll post back here.
So far, seems the Firefox extension is a slightly more complex answer if you’re a Mac user, but will look at that if I can’t solve this route.
Last edited by alanfluff (2009-01-26 17:06:39)
At LAST I’ve cheerfully donated to the core devs at #TXP. I only wish I were able to give more. Thanks to the devs and ALL fellow TXPers. -A
Offline
Re: Using an external editor
alanfluff
Does cnk_versioning do anything for you, or does that do things “the wrong way round” for your needs?
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
Offline
Re: Using an external editor
I think cnk_versioning might well be the answer, if my cludge cannot do it for me. Tks for the link, never tried this one before. Cheers, -Alan
At LAST I’ve cheerfully donated to the core devs at #TXP. I only wish I were able to give more. Thanks to the devs and ALL fellow TXPers. -A
Offline
Pages: 1