Wizards vs. Editors

Page wizards can be used to both create and edit files of a particular type in FrontPage. It makes sense for a wizard to be both a generator and editor of a file type if the documents will contain information which is not directly editable by FrontPage or another program.

To register a program as an editor for a file type, use the FrontPage Explorer’s Tools : Options : Configure Editors dialog. This information is stored in the file fpexplor.ini in the Windows directory, in a section called [Editors]. Each line is of the form:

   Extension=EditorName,EditorPath,AutoImportFlag

Extension is a file extension without the dot, such as “idc”. EditorName is what the user sees, such as Database Connector Wizard. EditorPath is the absolute path to the editor program. AutoImportFlag is 0 if the program will use OLE automation calls to save the page to the current web (such as a typical wizard does), or 1 if the edited page file should be auto-imported by the FrontPage Explorer. Files are auto-imported when the FrontPage Explorer window is activated and the timestamp of the file being edited has changed.

The Explorer will launch a normal editing program with a single argument: a path to the temporary file that is to be edited. A wizard program that is invoked as an editor will be launched with the path to a temporary file containing its input arguments, as described in the previous section. In this case the argument Editing is set to 1, and PageFile is set to the path of the temporary file being edited, which has just been download by the FrontPage Explorer. The wizard should delete the PageFile when it exits if Editing is set to 1.

As mentioned earlier, a page wizard’s INF file should contain the key/value “editor=1” if it can be launched as an editor.