The Kate Handbook

Anders Lund (anders alweb.dk)

Seth Rothberg (sethmr bellatlantic.org)

Dominik Haumann (dhdev gmx.de)

T.C. Hollingsworth (tchollingsworth gmail.com)

Revision 3.11 KDE 4.11 (2013-04-15)

Copyright © 2000, 2001 Seth Rothberg

Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2005 Anders Lund

Copyright © 2005, 2009 Dominik Haumann

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2013 T.C. Hollingsworth

Kate is a programmer's text editor for KDE 4 and above.

This handbook documents Kate Version 3.11

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. The Fundamentals

Starting Kate

From the Menu
From the Command Line
Drag and Drop

Working with Kate

Quick Start
Shortcuts

Using Sessions

Restoring old style Kate behavior

Getting Help

With Kate
With Your Text Files
Articles on Kate

3. Working With the Kate MDI

The Main Window

The Editor area

The Documents List

The Built in Terminal Emulator

4. Working with the Kate editor

Navigating in the Text

Working with the Selection

Using Block Selection
Using Overwrite Selection
Using Persistent Selection

Copying and Pasting Text

Finding and Replacing Text

The Search and Replace Bars
Finding Text
Replacing Text

Using Bookmarks

Automatically Wrapping text

Using automatic indenting

Line Modification Indicators

The Scrollbar Minimap

5. Working with Plugins

Kate Application Plugins

Editor Component Extensions

File Templates

Menu Structure
Using a Kate Template
Creating your own templates
Editing templates
The Kate Template Format
Thanks and Acknowledgments

XML Validation

Menu Structure
Thanks and Acknowledgments

XML Completion

How to Use
Features and Limitations
Menu Structure
Thanks and Acknowledgments

Menu Structure

Search and Replace

Introduction
Interface
Menu Structure

Menu Structure

Filesystem Browser

Menu Structure
Interface
Configuration

Kate Snippets

Introduction
Menu Structure
Snippets panel
Using Snippets
Thanks and Acknowledgments

Build Plugin

Introduction
Using the Build Plugin
Menu Structure
Thanks and Acknowledgments

Introduction
Connecting to a Database
Running Queries
Browsing
Menu Structure
Thanks and Acknowledgments

Introduction
Menu and Toolbar Structure
Debug View
Call Stack and Locals
Thanks and Acknowledgments

6. Advanced Editing Tools

Comment/Uncomment

The Editor Component Command Line

Standard Command Line Commands

Using Code Folding

Extending Kate with Scripts

Indentation Scripts
Command Line Scripts
Scripting API

7. The VI Input Mode

VI Input Mode

Incompatibilities with Vim
Switching Modes
Integration with Kate features
Supported normal/visual mode commands
Supported motions
Supported text objects
Supported insert mode commands
The Comma Text Object
Missing Features

8. Menu Entries

The File Menu
The Edit Menu
The View Menu
The Bookmarks Menu
The Sessions Menu
The Tools Menu
The Settings Menu
The Help Menu

9. Configuring Kate

The Main Configuration Dialog

The Kate Application Configuration

General
Sessions
Plugins
Documents
Terminal

The Editor Component Configuration

Appearance
Fonts & Colors
Editing
Open/Save
Extensions

Configuring With Document Variables

How Kate uses Variables
Available Variables

10. Credits and License

A. Working with Syntax Highlighting

The Kate Syntax Highlight System

How it Works
Rules
Context Styles and Keywords
Default Styles

The Highlight Definition XML Format

Overview
The Sections in Detail
Available Default Styles

Highlight Detection Rules

The Rules in Detail
Tips & Tricks

B. Regular Expressions

Introduction

Escaping characters
Character Classes and abbreviations
Alternatives: matching “one of”
Sub Patterns
Characters with a special meaning inside patterns

Quantifiers

Greed
In context examples

C. Installation

List of Examples

5.1. Some Example Queries
5.2. Example SELECT Query
6.1. char examples
6.2. Replacing text in the current line
6.3. Replacing text in the whole file
6.4. A More Advanced Example
6.5. sort vs. natsort
6.6. Join selected lines
6.7. Remove blank lines
6.8. Remove blank lines