I am exploring the wonderful world of extending Visual Studio.  I am
debating whether I should take the "add-in" route or the go the full
hog and create a project type.

What i am wanting to do is to add CFML (ColdFusion) support to
VisualStudio.  Fundamentally CFML is just HTML but with a series of
new tags.  Thats it.  So i need different syntax highlighting for the
CFML tags (eg <cfset>), but overall its just HTML with all the same
rules that comes with HTML editing.

In addition to this, I have a debugger module, that allows me to step
through the CFML code.  But I don't necessarily need to use the
official VStudio debugger API.   I have implemented this before for
Java based IDE's and their plugin development was relatively simple.

My biggest fear is that I have to go back to C++!!!  I haven't done
C++ in over 8 years, and I was hoping to sink my teeth into C# when i
entered this world.  But that aside, the key thing is to get the job
done.

So with that in mind, my issues is that if i create a new
project/language for VStudio, then i am essentially reinventing the
wheel.  For what?  Just to have different tags highlighted in a
different color to the excellent inbuilt HTML editor.

Advice please.  :)

[1] Can i register a new file extension (aka .cfml/.cfm) that is
opened by the HTML editor?

[2] Can i add extend the HTML editor to add new html definitions to
cope with the CFML tags.

[3] I am comfortable with the 'add-in' side of things, but is C++ my
only choice when developing a new project for Visual Studio?

What do people think?  Thanks in advance for your input.