The KDE Advanced Text Editor, or Kate, is a

source code editor A source-code editor is a text editor program designed specifically for editing source code of computer programs. It may be a standalone application or it may be built into an integrated development environment (IDE) or web browser. Source-code ed ...

developed by the

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

community. It has been a part of

KDE Software Compilation The KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC) was an umbrella term for the desktop environment plus a range of included applications produced by KDE. From its 1.0 release in July 1998 until the release of version 4.4 in February 2010, the Software Comp ...

since version 2.2, which was first released in 2001. Intended for software developers, it features

syntax highlighting Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that are used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colours and fonts according to the category of terms ...

code folding Code or text folding, or less commonly holophrasting, is a feature of some graphical user interfaces that allows the user to selectively hide ("fold") or display ("unfold") parts of a document. This allows the user to manage large amounts of tex ...

, customizable layouts,

regular expression A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp; sometimes referred to as rational expression) is a sequence of characters that specifies a search pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" ...

support, and extensibility. The text editor's mascot is Kate the Cyber Woodpecker.

History

Kate has been part of the KDE Software Compilation since release 2.2 in 2001. Because of

KParts KDE Frameworks is a collection of libraries and software frameworks readily available to any Qt-based software stacks or applications on multiple operating systems. Featuring frequently needed functionality solutions like hardware integration, fi ...

technology, it is possible to embed Kate as an editing component in other KDE applications. Major

KDE applications The KDE Gear (also known as the KDE Applications Bundle or KDE Applications) is a set of applications and supporting libraries that are developed by the KDE community, primarily used on Linux-based operating systems but mostly multiplatform, and ...

which use Kate as an editing component include the

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools ...

KDevelop KDevelop is a free and open-source integrated development environment (IDE) for Unix-like computer operating systems and Windows. It provides editing, navigation and debugging features for several programming languages, and integration with buil ...

, the web development environment Quanta Plus, and the LaTeX front-end

Kile Kile or KILE may refer to: * Darryl Kile, a Major League Baseball player * Kile, a TeX/LaTeX text editor * Kile, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, Poland * Kile (surname) * Kile (unit), an Ottoman unit of volume * KWCC-FM, a radio station (89.5 F ...

. Kate has won the advanced text editor comparison in ''

Linux Voice ''Linux Voice'' was a Linux and open source magazine (print and digital) which began publication in the UK in April 2014. It was sold on news-stands around the world. History The magazine started as a result of a successful Indiegogo crowdfund ...

'' magazine. , development had started to port Kate, along with

Dolphin A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (the ...

Konsole Konsole is a free and open-source terminal emulator graphical application which is part of KDE Applications and ships with the KDE desktop environment. Konsole was originally written by Lars Doelle. It ls licensed under the GPL-2.0-or-later and ...

KDE Telepathy KDE Telepathy is an instant messaging (IM) and voice over IP (VoIP) client which supports text, voice, video, file transfers, and inter-application communication over various IM protocols. It uses the Telepathy framework as its back-end. It i ...

, and

Yakuake The KDE Gear (also known as the KDE Applications Bundle or KDE Applications) is a set of applications and supporting libraries that are developed by the KDE community, primarily used on Linux-based operating systems but mostly multiplatform, and ...

, to

KDE Frameworks 5 KDE Frameworks is a collection of libraries and software frameworks readily available to any Qt-based software stacks or applications on multiple operating systems. Featuring frequently needed functionality solutions like hardware integration, fi ...

. In 2022, the KDE text-editor KWrite was modified to use the same code base as Kate with deactivated features.

Features

Kate is a

that features syntax highlighting for over 300 file formats with code folding rules. The syntax highlighting is extensible via

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

files. It supports

UTF-8 UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit''. UTF-8 is capable of ...

UTF-16 UTF-16 (16-bit Unicode Transformation Format) is a character encoding capable of encoding all 1,112,064 valid code points of Unicode (in fact this number of code points is dictated by the design of UTF-16). The encoding is variable-length, as cod ...

, ISO-8859-1 and

ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...

encoding schemes and can detect a file's

character encoding Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to Graphics, graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of Language, human language, allowing them to be Data storage, stored, Data communication, transmi ...

automatically. Kate offers code completion and reference finding for various programming languages through its

Language Server Protocol The Language Server Protocol (LSP) is an open, JSON-RPC-based protocol for use between source code editors or integrated development environments (IDEs) and servers that provide programming language-specific features like code completion, syntax hi ...

Client plugin. The default configuration supports C,

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

, D, Fortran, Go,

Latex Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

Rust Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO( ...

, and OCaml. Kate's main text editor widget is called ''KatePart'', which is reusable under the terms of the LGPL version 2 license. It must not be confused with the KParts, a KDE plugin framework for user interface components that Kate also uses. Kate can be used as a modal text editor through its '' vi'' input mode. Kate features

multiple document interface A multiple-document interface (MDI) is a graphical user interface in which multiple windows reside under a single parent window. Such systems often allow child windows to embed other windows inside them as well, creating complex nested hierarchies ...

, window splitting, project editing and sessions to facilitate editing multiple documents. Using ''sessions'', one can customize Kate for different projects by saving the list of open files, the list of enabled plug-ins and the window configuration. Kate includes the KDE

terminal emulator A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote term ...

through its Terminal Tool View plugin. As of April 2021, this feature is not available for the Windows version of Kate. The "quick open" feature allows searching opened files by name for quick recalling. Line modification indicators highlight lines with unsaved changes and lines added in the current session. Being a KDE application, Kate transparently opens and saves files over all protocols supported by KIO libraries. This includes

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

SSH The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution. SSH applications are based on ...

, SMB and

WebDAV WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for con ...

, among others. , unlike Xed, ''Kate'' is equipped with a session manager which allows naming, saving, and restoring sessions, meaning a list of momentarily open file tabs. Saved sessions are stored as key-value-formatted *.katesession files into ~/.local/share/kate/sessions/. Other features are a

clipboard A clipboard is a thin, rigid board with a clip at the top for holding paper in place. A clipboard is typically used to support paper with one hand while writing on it with the other, especially when other writing surfaces are not available. Th ...

history with up to ten items, the ability to jump to a line number,"The editor holds a clipboard history that contains up to 10 clipboard entries."
/ref> and source control integration using

Git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data in ...

References

External links

* {{KDE Applications using D-Bus Free text editors KDE Applications Unix text editors

History

Features

See also

References

External links