[HN Gopher] Kate editor on all platforms
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       Kate editor on all platforms
        
       Author : cullmann
       Score  : 141 points
       Date   : 2024-04-14 17:47 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (cullmann.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (cullmann.io)
        
       | riidom wrote:
       | Kate was, beside Dolphin one of my earliest and most positively
       | surprising discoveries on KDE.
       | 
       | Kate fulfills for me the role that Np++ had back in the windows
       | days. I use it when I want to work file based and not project- or
       | directory based.
        
         | shrimp_emoji wrote:
         | Like Dolphin is even better than Explorer, Kate is even better
         | than Notepad++!
        
           | topato wrote:
           | That is a wild accusation. I need to install a nightly of
           | Kate and give it another chance, if it's truly as good as you
           | say. Np++ is starting to annoy me, with it's constant
           | reopening of like 50 files every time it's started lol.
        
             | copperx wrote:
             | The fix is a checkbox away in the np++ settings dialog.
             | That just goes to show that defaults are incredibly
             | powerful.
        
             | tredre3 wrote:
             | You can disable that in the settings, it's under the
             | "Backup" category.
        
             | gerdesj wrote:
             | N++ can tail and follow files and colour code the output.
             | Smashing!
             | 
             | Kate recently opens a default start page which I now find
             | annoying. Kate also opens all previously opened files by
             | default.
             | 
             | All of these things are defaults that are easy to override
             | but changing defaults can be annoying, especially when you
             | have been used the previous defaults for more than a decade
             | ...
        
           | g8oz wrote:
           | The last time I checked Kate could not do basic line
           | operations like remove empty lines, duplicate line etc.
        
             | sigzero wrote:
             | It does all of that now.
        
         | p4bl0 wrote:
         | If you need to work file based and not project or directory
         | based then you should probably be using Kwrite, which literary
         | is a stripped down version of Kate specifically for this
         | purpose.
        
           | binkHN wrote:
           | I absolutely love KWrite to do something in a pinch!
        
           | calvinmorrison wrote:
           | Which shows how far ahead KDE was even in 3.5 times with
           | reusable embeddable components that were highly engineered.
           | For example Konqueror has a long list of plugins including
           | calling kwrite to render inside of it. The early kio tooling
           | that predates fuse in having universal access through a
           | single file viewer.
        
             | doubled112 wrote:
             | Was that what they called KParts? Terminal, file browser,
             | text editor, more, all easy to embed and build an
             | application around?
        
               | jraph wrote:
               | Yep. Still current I think.
        
               | calvinmorrison wrote:
               | Yes exactly! I forgot to mention dcop a message passing
               | forerunner to dbus as well as arts the forerunner to
               | pulsaudioe
        
             | zilti wrote:
             | And it is so frustrating to see how unknown and neglected
             | KParts is
        
             | eMPee584 wrote:
             | And it seems konqueror is the only browser today that can
             | split a tab into multiple panes! I used this a lot in 3.5
             | times. It still works, just need to file another bug report
             | for sane dnd behavior..
        
               | no_wizard wrote:
               | Vivaldi does this if I recall correctly
        
             | signaru wrote:
             | KHTML also led to WebKit then Blink.
        
         | kzrdude wrote:
         | Gedit with lots of plugins did the same for me in the early
         | gnome 2 days.
        
       | spookie wrote:
       | Love Kate! Given I _had_ to use Windows on my last job, I
       | promptly installed it. Need multicursor shenanigans, and the
       | lovely search & replace. Had some trouble with the default theme
       | however (flashbang everytime I opened it). But, a nightly build
       | solved that.
        
       | pushedx wrote:
       | For some reason I expected this article to be a horror story of
       | bad behavior from the new community upon porting to other
       | platforms (complaints about the port etc.), and how it wasn't
       | worth the effort.
       | 
       | Glad to see that it's mostly a status update and a call for
       | contributions.
        
       | itsautomatisch wrote:
       | Kate has been a really good replacement for stuff like VSCode or
       | BBEdit, but it's still got some rough edges on macOS in my
       | experience. I mostly use it on Linux, and the LSP support is
       | actually pretty good. It's definitely a barebones experience
       | without all of the plugin support other editors might have, but
       | if you just need something for writing scripts or editing files
       | it should fit the bill.
        
       | speakspokespok wrote:
       | Does anybody know why Kate wants to install pulseaudio on
       | OpenBSD? This would be a perfect IDE.
       | kate-23.08.4:libltdl-2.4.2p2: ok        useradd: Warning: home
       | directory `/var/run/pulse' doesn't exist, and -m was not
       | specified        kate-23.08.4:pulseaudio-17.0p0: ok
       | kate-23.08.4:pcaudiolib-1.2: ok
       | kate-23.08.4:espeak-1.51p2: ok        kate-23.08.4:dotconf-1.3p0:
       | ok        kate-23.08.4:py3-xdg-0.28p2: ok
       | kate-23.08.4:speech-dispatcher-0.11.5: ok
        
         | ognarb wrote:
         | For text to speech.
        
         | tedunangst wrote:
         | Openbsd pkg dependencies tend to be fairly coarse grained, so
         | if you depend on KDE, you get all of KDE.
        
           | speakspokespok wrote:
           | thank you for the useful reply. :-)
        
         | speakspokespok wrote:
         | For the few people that might be looking for a light IDE option
         | for OpenBSD Geany is available and works really well.
        
       | presbyterian wrote:
       | Kate is such an impressive editor, I'm glad that it's being
       | worked on and ported to other operating systems, and I didn't
       | know it had LSP support now! Good to see! If anything happens to
       | BBEdit, Kate may be my next move
        
         | bayindirh wrote:
         | I'm using KATE on Linux and BBEdit in macOS to develop in
         | Golang mainly. Kate is snappy, robust and feature packed. It's
         | my go to tool when I don't need a full-blown IDE.
        
       | aspyct wrote:
       | Kate was my first code editor on Linux. Learned PHP and python on
       | it.
       | 
       | I still have nostalgia with the pink syntax coloring it has
       | (had?) for python!
       | 
       | Thanks a lot to all the contributors, sure had an impact on my
       | life!
        
         | ixaxaar wrote:
         | I wrote a part of the kernel (uitron) for Toshiba SSDs that
         | went into macbooks around 2013 on kate. It was my first and
         | favorite editor :D
        
       | heavyset_go wrote:
       | Kate + LSP servers can get you really far as a pseudo-IDE. It's
       | one of my favorite editors.
       | 
       | If you want to use it on other platforms, though, you have to dig
       | around Gitlab build artifacts to grab recent successful builds.
       | Looks like that may have changed.
        
       | dec0dedab0de wrote:
       | If anyone is looking for a topic of a blog entry, I would like to
       | see an analysis of the code/toolchain differences for projects
       | like this that have patches for many different architectures and
       | operating systems.
        
       | nonrandomstring wrote:
       | Kate is a lovely editor. I wrote about half of Designing Sound
       | with Kate before switching to Emacs near the end (to better
       | handle code integration). What I appreciate is the ability to
       | have a pane of files open and very quickly cut and paste between
       | them.
       | 
       | Even though I am a baptised and confirmed Emacs disciple, I still
       | never find the buffer orientation quite maps to files the way I
       | want. Kate hit that sweet-spot in a file based workflow,
        
       | Lyngbakr wrote:
       | I'd never heard of Kate and wondered if someone could explain
       | what Kate's differentiator is versus other popular editors (e.g.,
       | Vim, Emacs, VSCode)? Is there something in particular that sets
       | it apart or is it just a matter of taste?
        
         | sneak wrote:
         | vim and emacs are TUI; Kate is a GUI app.
         | 
         | VSCode is a full-fledged IDE; Kate is much simpler. Think of it
         | as comparable to TextEdit or notepad.exe, but with more
         | features.
         | 
         | It's definitely trending in the VSCode direction, but VSCode is
         | full of surveillance and corporate API clients, and Kate is
         | not.
        
           | nequo wrote:
           | Emacs is not TUI. Its main frontend is GUI, you can display
           | images, play videos, read PDFs in it if you want to.
        
         | IshKebab wrote:
         | It's a lot lighter and faster than full IDEs like VSCode, and
         | it also uses a modern GUI unlike Vim and Emacs. It's more like
         | Notepad++.
        
         | derbOac wrote:
         | I've been using Kate for long time. I try other things but seem
         | to gravitate back to Kate.
         | 
         | It's relatively resource efficient and fast, very full-
         | featured, open source, and I can use it on different OSes and
         | it's pretty much the same everywhere. Also it's GUI, and has a
         | standard GUI UX.
         | 
         | I've never really had any problems with it at all until I
         | started using it on ARM MacOS, where there were some weird bugs
         | with filenames during saves (no corruption or anything, but
         | would default to weird things and occasionally crash if the
         | "wrong" filenames were used); but then the most recent major
         | version seemed to fix all the problems.
        
       | vrinsd wrote:
       | I've been using Kate on macOS and Windows for sometime and it's
       | outstanding this is possible (a cross-platform KDE app). Kate of
       | course on Linux kicks ass as well.
       | 
       | One stupid question: Is anyone aware of how to change the UI
       | "theme" if you're running Kate on macOS or Windows? The 2D, flat
       | icons really look horrible to me.
        
       | vrinsd wrote:
       | Probably like most people here you end up with a collection of
       | tools, so glad Kate exists and really appreciate the high quality
       | and amazing features. Years past you'd have to pay for things
       | like UltraEdit and fight licenses, etc which are a nightmare if
       | you cross boundaries with big companies.
       | 
       | I find myself using Kate, Geany and Notepad++ at different points
       | in time for different tasks across my Windows/macOS/Linux
       | machines.
       | 
       | Kate surprised me a few months ago, I had to write assembly for a
       | fully custom processor whose ISA is not at all industry standard.
       | Kate was able to do the syntax highlighting and with the right
       | color theme and "double-click to highlight" it made the non-
       | trivial changes I needed to make a LOT easier than anything else
       | (VSCode/VSCodium included).
        
       | wkat4242 wrote:
       | I love the whole KDE toolchain and plasma as well. I donate
       | monthly. It's so much more useful to me than the opinionated
       | design of gnome.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related. Others?
       | 
       |  _Kate Editor Features_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37231529 - Aug 2023 (18
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Integrated Terminal on Windows in KDE Kate_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34824467 - Feb 2023 (1
       | comment)
       | 
       |  _Kate_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34697173 - Feb
       | 2023 (23 comments)
       | 
       |  _Kate - New Features - August 2022_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32585221 - Aug 2022 (1
       | comment)
       | 
       |  _Kate 22.08_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32219281 -
       | July 2022 (6 comments)
       | 
       |  _Kate is a fantastic text editor_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29623909 - Dec 2021 (1
       | comment)
       | 
       |  _KDE Advanced Text Editor: A Feature-Packed Text Editor_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26972858 - April 2021 (1
       | comment)
       | 
       |  _Kate Editor: Search In Files and Multi-Threading_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25969409 - Jan 2021 (1
       | comment)
       | 
       |  _The Kate Text Editor in 2020_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25592677 - Dec 2020 (5
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _The Kate text editor is 20 years old_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25424735 - Dec 2020 (81
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Kate is soon 20 years old_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25030096 - Nov 2020 (12
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Kate - A Qt Text Editor for Linux, MacOS and Windows_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16558407 - March 2018 (2
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Kate Turning 10 Years Old_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2876471 - Aug 2011 (20
       | comments)
        
       | andmarios wrote:
       | Kate was one of the main reasons I switched to Linux in
       | 2004/2005.
       | 
       | I had a lab in MySQL, and back then, the only option to develop
       | in Windows was MySQL Workbench, which was as heavy as it got.
       | Running an SQL statement was painfully slow, and iteration cycles
       | were huge.
       | 
       | In Linux, you would write your SQL in Kate, and run MySQL's cli
       | in the embedded terminal. Once ready, you would click the button
       | "pipe to terminal". Instant run. What took many minutes in
       | Windows took less than 2 seconds in Linux. How can you not love
       | this?
       | 
       | Another reason was Amarok, an (the) mp3 player. Do you like how
       | Spotify and other providers create automatically infinite
       | playlists, radios, etc based on your tastes? Yes, KDE had this
       | since 2002 I think? It was first copied by iTunes, then by
       | Spotify, and now is considered a standard function. :)
        
         | jchmbrln wrote:
         | Yes! When I started using Kate on Linux ca. 2005, I was coming
         | from Notepad on Windows and couldn't believe how nice it was. I
         | believe it was my first experience of syntax highlighting.
         | 
         | And Amarok! I haven't thought of that in a while. Losing Amarok
         | was my single biggest regret when I became a Max user. I've not
         | used anything since that came close.
        
       | kldx wrote:
       | Kate is the snappiest editor I have tried. This is just anecdata
       | - the keystroke latency feels better than the other mainstream
       | editors I use.
        
       | whalesalad wrote:
       | Kate is a surprisingly epic editor. It's not my primary (vscode)
       | but I use it often to just preview a plaintext file the same way
       | I might use vim or sublime. Love the native rainbow columns in
       | CSV.
        
       | m0guz wrote:
       | > Even if that is a non-free platform, we can reach out to new
       | users and developers that might later be then even interested to
       | switch a full open platform.
       | 
       | KDE developers have always been great with their vision. I guess
       | they will try to create OS Shell that sync users data between
       | different OS? Their applications cover 99% of the casual users,
       | with KDE Connect [0].
       | 
       | KDE Plasma has never clicked with me but KDE applications have
       | always been my choice in a Linux system because of their
       | responsiveness.
       | 
       | Dolphin for Windows[1] also exists but has some issues.
       | 
       | [0] https://apps.kde.org/kdeconnect/
       | 
       | [1] https://cdn.kde.org/ci-builds/system/dolphin/master/windows/
        
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