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Kate is great. I do a lot in CLI, but when it comes to text editing, I really enjoy my GUI because I'm an aspiring writer. I use Kate for quick editing, VSCode if I'm really getting into some code, and novelWriter if I'm writing my book (a lovely writing application in markdown with fully customizable syntax highlighting and separate themes for UI and document/syntax).

I was not expecting you to choose Kate but as a KDE user, I too like Kate as a text editor. Kate follows KDE's slogan of simple by default, powerful when needed.

IMO trying new things is the most fun part of the linux desktop experience.

Matt is very humble. As always, watching his videos makes me feel like I'm chilling with a friend.

When I found the"VI mode" option in Kate it made me appreciate KDE all that much more.

I switched to FreeBSD recently (because "I use arch btw" wasn't edgy enough) and there is no prebuilt vscode package there. There is a "port" which I had to compile... it took 12h and 50+GB of space while compiling. And that kind of opened my eyes and made me look more into non-Electron apps. Helix and Kate were actually my first thoughts.

Great video ! Thanks !

kate is without a dobut one of the most performant light weight gui code editors with the best feature set ive used it for the longest time before i switched to nvim kde is always so overpowered

I have been using Kate for years. Made the full switch to Linux for the final time a few years ago and rock Manjaro KDE currently (although considering taking the dive into Arch Sway) and I mainly use just the basic functions of Kate. For Markdown I was using ghostwriter. Now I figured out that I can enable the Document Preview plugin (you have to hit "Save" in the plugin menu lol) and just do my Markdown in Kate. I feel mixed about the document preview being white background as I use dark mode, but the preview is technically more accurate to reality. I'll have to play around a bit more and see if I'm okay with just getting rid of ghostwriter or not. I have recently also been finding that I use terminal and workspaces more when I'm in a Window Manager instead of a Desktop Environment. I feel myself wanting to slip into Window Managers more and more lately...

I ve been using kate for a little bit, but i cant figure out what the icon is supposed to be. Is it a hummingbird? Is it the letter K? I still dont know.

When I first switched to Manjaro from wind*ws, I was surprised by the large software stack that they just throw at you (all the KDE apps). Kate was a very welcome surprise. I personally would say its a mix of Notepad++ and vscode, just taking the best parts of both and throwing in a nice set of tools as glue. Another one is Dolphin, man I wish Wind*ws explorer was that good before I switched, but now it's getting ads?? Great job KDE team!

I used kate a long time ago before moving to vim, it was quite good but the GUI is quite intrusive for me.

Kate (which I believe stands for "KDE Advanced Text Editor") has to be the best I've ever used. I use nano in the CLI, particularly for editing config files where I prefer not to use a GUI program. At the time of writing I have yet to try Vim so can't compare.

Kate is my go-to editor!

I absolutely love Kate. The problem is, I haven't understood how to use Omnisharp with it. I wish it just downloaded everything automatically. I can't find any links that can help me setup auto-completion either.

will it work on linux mint 21 xfce

I try both Vim and Nano and Nano has my vote. It looks pretty and does the job well for casual user like me who occasionally fiddle around with config setting.

Have you tried Helix?

That's all very well but has it got Nano mode?

is anyone using Kate to edit remote files on other servers/machines ? if yes how do you achieve that?

yo, how do i set the theme for kate on dwm? tried everything but couldn't figure out, KDE apps doesn't work too well on my machine for some reason

genuinely i have to ask if you are not a developer what do you use vim for ? like for what one has to edit so much text to learn vim ? or is it just curiosity ?

hmmm.....may need to take a look...btw the document overview I've heard it called a mini-map.

can you do a tutorial on how you set up dark theme and different language support? wanting to use it for python aswell to get away from visual studio code...

Ty for the good info. It's ironic how we just stick to what we are used to. Since I am so used to Geany, I don't give other editors a chance, I just uninstall them and install Geany. Not saying geany is the best, but I don't use all of it's features, so it's enough for me. Same with file managers; Dolphin has a lot of features, but pcmanfm is enough for me and I prefer to use that one. Speaking of editors, how about a video on micro? Apparently, it has more features than nano

I was always disturbed by the sideways text on the left side of Kate. Looks like they've done away with it, or is it configurable?

I was talking to some of the kate devs and they indicated there were no plans for them to work on aging bugs. Patches for obscure input setups and creation of folders on-save were some of the oldest bugs and it felt to me that they could have been solved in a few days, but are now years old. The lack of someone to commit changes from the issue tracker part-time should be corrected, but it barely registers as a problem too bothersome to address.

I've used Kate off and on over the years and it's gotten very good. In fact I recommend it for anyone that doesn't like emacs or vim. It has great syntax highlighting and it's basically a full blown IDE. The only reason I don't use it is because it lacks a lot of presets for the vi input mode. For instance, I can't :cd with it, or :e an absolute path, unless there's a configuration option somewhere for either of those, but they should be default. And most important, it doesn't handle cursor wrapping. Hit the right arrow or l at the end of the line, if it doesn't jump to the start of the next line, it's a no go from me.

I like of Kate, is very simple configure and is very fast.

Probably would have loved Kate on another life but now I'm too deep on Vim to even try it. A bit off topic but how good is KDE on Debian? I tried the Fedora spin and the thing fell apart 😂 but I still have the itch for actually trying KDE.

Does the search list out all matching occurrences (if case there are multiple matching instances of searched term). Notepad++ has this feature but lacks in VSCode. And there is no Notepad++ for mac hence the question.

My favorite one's micro for terminal, way better than nano.

Normally you can unlock the toolbars and move them around. You should be able to move the tab bar that way

I would replace Mousepad with Kate any time of the week, starting from today 😊

It depends on what u call a text editor. I would vote 4 Visual Studio Code (I am a programmer) though not perfect because of its electron roots. If you wants something a little more then I would look towards Jetbrains suite of IDEs which are awesome but cost

Is there a way to get Qt apps like Kate to look more like GTK?

Your pronunciation of accoutrement was good. I believe its a borrowed word from french as accoutrement in french means getup in a somewhat insulting way with it used to meaning an elaborate outfit.

I was surprised when I opened a Godot scrip file there, it highlighted it and said what language was (gdscript). Also, the thing is a complete IDE, that's amazing

It's easier to get to "vi mode" is to right-click the mode button in the bottom-right which is next to the language being used which in this video is "en_US".

Kate is awsome :)

kate reminds me of a nicer looking notepad++ for linux. its about as close as you can get where its just has the right features enabled right off the bat. nice jetbrains btw. I also use it.

I really like Kate used before a tons a editor but Kate is the winner.

i have an issue with GUI editors that i somehow didn't bother to know more about because i enjoy the simple terminal text editors, but how do you make GUI editors modify root files, why can't you invoke sudo like you do with vim/nano/micro

I've been using Kwrite, a variant of Kate for simple text editing for notes for a while.

If most KDE applications have the letter K in front of their names, like Kdevelop, does that mean the actual name of Kate is ate?

vscode?

Kind of reminds me of an open source version of Sublime text

You don't need to use regex to use vim, but when you DO want to use a regex, vim makes using a regex accessible with very few extra key presses, and no required mouse interactions.

I use kate if i need to edit some code really quick. Otherwise i use vim that is my absolute favorite ❤️

I like kate. It's my preferred editor. Just sucks that on arch it installs kwrite as well by default

I use Kate for every language except for C++ where I use an IDE. You can even add custom buttons in the bar to launch scripts to compile and whatever task.

Kate is the single longest wait until interactive of all programs I run on *every* one of my machines, from RPi4 to intel j4205 to Ryzen 5700G, all running different distros with different package managers, and various versions of KDE. I can literally open, wait for interactive and exit GIMP, LibreOffice Writer and Krita one after the other in less time than it takes Kate to get to interactive, and I have no idea why... Most time seems to be spent going from rendering the window borders to rendering the actual window contents.

i use it every day

Hum... I might have to check this out for simple bash scripting and get away from vscode & nano.

Is it possible to make it transparent?

I ❤️ Kate. I used to use Geany for C. I'm using Lapce for Rust. Don't care what vim users say. I'd like to not cram my brain with key combos. The whole keyboard only thing makes you cool I guess.... whatever.

11:25 It is french, I am too, and that was a pretty good pronunciation. Not sure what it means in English, but in French it is a derogatory word to refer to someone's clothing with contempt or scorn.

One disadvantage is that kate not have any timestamp or insert "today's date". (gedit and pluma have).

i install either sublime or geany as gui text editor. but it's out of habit, i don't even use them much, i prefer vim.

👍

I've always wondered, what is his day job? Is youtube his job or does he do something different?

Kate can handle big files well

I use Kate to write my program 😅

There are things between nano and vim. Like micro: much of the power of vim but behaves like nano so mere mortals actually can get some typing done :p

I would use it if Kate is renamed to Karen. 😂

although, I love Kate for many reasons, absence of "Emmet" plugin is a deal breaker for me.

I agree with you, KATE is the best, and VI mode is what converted me. If you want to know the absolute best feature is the .kateproject file. You just have to create a .kateproject file in the root folder of the project which has a for repo. For instance, the “Kate” .kateproject file looks like this: { "name": "Kate" , "files": [ { "git": 1 } ] } The file content is written in JSON syntax. The project name is “Kate”, and the files contained in should be read from Git.

Huh? Kate has VI mode? How have I never noticed this?!?!

I can't use vim, its just so unintuitive, I prefer simple and easy, and nano is easy, I don't need advanced features in a text editor, I prefer light and fast, so featherpad is my current choice.

WHAAAT, KATE HAS VI MODE, WOOOOW

I not use kate because it has lots of indentation bugs. You need to be auto formatting all time. When these issues gets fixed I will like to work with it

you said accoutrement correctly

Yes, it's French, and yes, you pronounced it correctly!

Love Kate, but I try to avoid QT based applications due to my current theme only existing on GTK.

GVM.

Still partial to notepadqq, but this could be a good option if I'm ever looking to upgrade. I do like the full document preview on the side.

15:45 bro i think you just forgot to press save

Geany

The only flaw I have with Kate is that it belongs to KDE and is technically a dependency

kate > notepad++

Gui text editors are great until it's time to analyze a 10gb log file. Vim is really all I need anymore.

Atom was great Microsoft kill it.... VS Code it's pretty good but I hate the constant changes. VS codium it's probably better because it doesn't come with Microsoft BS... Il ll try Kate but some add-ons are a must for me.

Does it support Rust?

Just FYI, "Vi" is pronounced "Vee Eye" ( you just say each letter). This was shorthand for starting "Ed" (the extremely archaic line editor) in VIsual mode when that became possible. Prior to that, there was no such thing as moving your cursor around, except for the line you were currently editing and even then, you had very limited options for movement.

Obsidian > LogSeq > Kate

Kate is unusable as a replacement for VSCode, you can't bind running a script or actions to keys It's a shame because is much faster

I've seen this asked many times before and the answer is always the same: your mom

if you are using Kate as some sort of an editor for programming languages instead of just simple "texts", then why not just install KDevelop instead? your already pulling half of the KDE dependency junks anyways.

whats wrong with geany?

Kate looks absolutely horrible in Linux Mint and the Editor itself gives no option of changing Icons to a dark theme. Borderline unusable with terrible configuration options. Never went further in using it than the GUI as it was stressing me out enough

Tried it on Mint Cinnamon for about 5 minutes. The color scheme made it unusable. Why anyone in their right mind would render black text on dark surfaces and white text on light surfaces is beyond me. Obviously they didn't bother testing this pile of garbage before shipping it. I thought VSCode was bad, but at least it offers a working dark mode. What an utter piece of shit and complete waste of time this was.

Mehh, sublime text it's far better optimized tbh. But that's something important to mee

You lost me at the very beginning.

Can you please stop mispronouncing "regex". I mean, it stands for "regular expression" so please stop saying it as if it stood for "rejular expression". Make sense?

i cant understand why people mix and match their system with gtk + qt stuff. the only reason i would go with kate is if i was already on KDE, or if there is nothing else that does the same work it can do(which is certainly not the case)

When learning Python, I found this gentleman's videos to be very helpful. youtube.com/@johnphilipjones . He is super nice and very helpful. He responds promptly to question. Thank you for the video on kate. I might take a look.