ZopeEditManager is a fantastic little utility that basically allows you to click the Pencil Icon on a content object and edit it locally, without having to download it, edit it, then save it back to your Plone site.  More about it can be found at Zope.org and UrbanApe.com.

This HowTo explains how to get it running on your Mac (Tiger) with Firefox, since all of the documentation explains how to do it in Mozilla.  There are some minor differences in the preference panes of Mozilla and Firefox which make this more difficult than it should be.  Go figure.

I believe you need to have the Developer Tools (XCode) installed for this to work, but I have them so I'm unable to test whether it works without them.  The DevTools is an enormous download from Apple DevCenter, or it should have come on the CD/DVD with your shiny new Mac.  If you have dialup, look for XCode install on your installation media.  If you have a fiber connection to the 'net, you can go to Apple's Developer pages.  You will need to register (for free) in order to download it.

OK, to start, download the latest ZopeEditManager, which you'd figure could be found on Zope.org, but that page isn't maintained any longer, so go looking at the author's site.  Install it by dragging the app into your Applications directory like any other application.  I personally put mine in "/Applications/Utilities" but I'm just like that.

Get the latest Firefox, just because Firefox rocks (unless you're Limi, and then Opera rocks, but this tutorial is not about Opera)

Now here's the rub.  You should be able to just go to the preferences and add the application/zope-edit MIME type to the download manager, but for some inane reason, you cannot actually add anything there.  Clicking on the External Editor pencil icon in Plone gets translated to the file extension of the file your downloading, so that didn't seem to work either!  I found a Firefox extension that makes this preference pane sane again:

Mime Edit

Install that, and restart Firefox.  Now you should have "Mimetypes..." in your Tools menu.  Go there.

Click "New Type..." and enter the following:

MIME Type: application-x-zope-edit
Description: External Editor
Extension: zem

Select "Open it with:" and browse to where you saved ZopeEditManager. Choose ZopeEditManager.

Et voila!  It should be working now.

Be sure to read the ZEM read me about how to configure it to map various MIME types to the local editor of choice.  For [a bad] example, I added the following to the Helper Apps pane of ZopeEditManagers preferences.

Type: application/msword
Editor: Microsoft Word
Extension: doc

Now, when I click on the pencil icon of a Word Document in my Plone, it opens ZEM, which in turn launches Word.  I make my edits to the Word document, save and close it, and ZEM saves it back to the Plone site.  No tedious downloading, editing, and reuploading!

Huzzah!

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~Spanky