This section will describe some of the items on the View menu so that you can quickly configure Kate to work the way you want it.

When you start Kate for the first time you will see two windows with white backgrounds. Above the two windows is a toolbar with the usual labeled icons. And above that, a menubar.

The left-hand window is a side bar. It combines the Documents and Filesystem Browser windows. Switch between the two by clicking on the tabs to the left of the window.

If you've started Kate with a file, the right-hand window will show the file you are editing and the Documents on the side bar will show the name of the file. Use the Filesystem Browser window to open files.

You can toggle all sidebar windows on and off in View → Tool Views menu or use Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F. This menu offers you your first glimpse into Kate's power and flexibility.

In Tool Views you have a list of all enabled plugins. Click the checkbox in front of each item or click with the left mouse button on the tool buttons in the sidebar to toggle this tool view on and off.

Many of Kate's keystroke commands (shortcuts) are configurable by way of the Settings menu. By default Kate honors the following key bindings.

Additionally you can use the shortcuts provided by the KatePart component and by all activated Kate plugins.

Window, View, Document, Frame, Editor... What are they all in the terminology of Kate, and how do you get the most out of it? This chapter will explain all of that, and even more.

Kate is capable of having more than one document open at the same time, and also of splitting the editing area into any number of frames, similar to how for example Konqueror or the popular emacs text editor works. This way you can view several documents at the same time, or more instances of the same document, handy for example if your document contains definitions in the top that you want to see often for reference. Or you could view a program source header in one frame, while editing the implementation file in another.

When a document is available in more than one editor, changes made in one editor will immediately be reflected in the others as well. This includes changing the text as well as selecting text. Search operations or cursor movement is only reflected in the current editor.

It is currently not possible to have more instances of the same document open in the sense that one instance will be edited while the other will not.

When splitting an editor into two frames, it is divided into two equally sized frames, both displaying the current document of that editor. The new frame will be at the bottom (in the case of a horizontal split) or at the right (for a vertical split). The new frame gets the focus, which is visualized by the blinking cursor bar in the focused frame.

Kate does not (yet!) provide any means for reading document related documentation. Depending on the file you are editing, you may find the Built in Terminal Emulator helpful for viewing related UNIX® manual pages or info documentation, or you can use Konqueror.

Kate's homepage provides some Articles and Howtos with further information beyond the scope of this handbook.

This plugin is meant for developers and probably of little use for users. It shows a backtrace delivered by gdb in a listview in a Kate toolview. Clicking on an item opens the selected file and jumps to the correct line number. It works for backtraces generated on your own machine, but it will also work for backtraces from other people, i.e. with /home/dummy/qt-copy/…/qwidget.cpp will still be found on other machines. For that to work, you have to index the directories where the source code is located.

Sometimes there are several files with the same name, e.g.

To pick the right choice, the plugin picks the last two parts of the url, in this case this would be

And then usually the plugin finds the correct one.

Indexing master and a branches of course will lead to a clash.

On the configuration page add the directories containing the source code.

Configure Paths in Backtrace browser tool view

Clicking OK will start indexing. When indexing is finished, open the toolview Backtrace Browser.

Now you can load a backtrace from the clipboard (e.g., when you clicked Copy to Clipboard in DrKonqi) or from a file.

The Build plugin allows you to run actions like build, clean and compile on a project.

The Build plugin adds a Build Output tool view at the bottom and a Build menu on the menubar. The tool view can be used to configure build target settings, while the menu can be used to perform build, clean and compile actions.

The Build Output tool view has two tabs:

Target Settings tab

The target settings tab can be used to configure various build targets and define targets sets.

To change the names or commands double click on the entries in the table and use the dropdown box to select the active target set. Use the checkbox in front of each target to define a default.

A new target set contains several configuration options:

Working Directory

You can set the path to the project here. Leave this empty to use the directory the current document is located in.

Build

This option lets you define the build command. It is set to make by default.

Clean

The option lets you define the clean command. It is set to make clean by default.

Config

This option lets you define the config command. It is set to cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local ../ by default.

On the top this plugin has a toolbar with the following buttons :

Build the selected target

Add a new build target

Create a new build target set

Copy a command or target set

Delete the current command or target set

The Kate Build Plugin was written by Kåre Särs.

Special thanks to Google Code-In 2011 participant Salma Sultana for writing much of this section.

This plugin allows you to close a group of documents based on their extension and path.

Assumed you have these documents opened in Kate:

Then you have the following options to close documents as displayed in the screenshot:

Use the checkbox in the last item of the list to enable or disable a confirmation dialog. The selected option will be applied to both close actions.

CTags generates an index (or tag) file of language objects found in source files that allows these items to be quickly and easily located using this plugin in Kate.

A tag signifies a language object for which an index entry is available (or, alternatively, the index entry created for that object).

Tag generation is supported for these programming languages.

The CTags plugin uses two different database files for the index.

On the CTags settings page in Kate's configuration you can add or remove directories containing the source code and regenerate the common CTags database.

Common Index

Configure CTags Global Database

At the bottom of the settings page you can adapt the CTags command.

For more information about all available options please read the CTags man page. This man page is available in KHelpCenter and you can also enter the URL man/:ctags directly into Konqueror

Clicking Update will start indexing. When indexing is finished, close the dialog.

You place the mouse cursor on the language object like function, symbol etc. that you are interested in and then select one of the actions in the CTags menu to jump to the line and file where the object is defined or declared.

By default the actions in the CTags menu have no shortcuts assigned. Use the keyboard shortcut editor to configure your own shortcuts.

Alternatively use the search field on the Lookup tab of the CTags view.

Entering characters into the search field will start the search and display matching names of language objects like functions, classes, symbols etc. together with type and filename.

Select an item in the list to jump to the corresponding line in the source file.

The plugin enables a live preview of the currently edited text document in the final format in the sidebar. So when editing e.g. a Markdown text or an SVG image, the result is instantly visible next to the source text.

For the display the plugin uses that KParts plugin which is currently selected as the preferred one for the MIME type of the document. If there is no KParts plugin for that type, no preview is possible.

To change the preferred plugin open the File Associations module in the System Settings and edit the Services Preference Order on the Embedding tab.

The buttons at the top of the preview window provide these actions:

From the top down, the Filesystem Browser consists of the following elements:

This plugin can be configured on the Filesystem Browser page of Kate's configuration.

The documents list displays a list of all documents currently open in Kate. Modified files will have a small floppy disk icon on their left to indicate that state.

On the top the Documents list has a toolbar with the following buttons:

Create new document

Open an existing document

Previous Document

Next Document

Save the current document

Save the current document under a new name

By default, the Documents list appears in Tree Mode, which displays the folder structure surrounding all currently open documents. Also available is List Mode, which displays a simple list of all open documents. You can switch modes by right-clicking on the list and selecting from the View Mode menu.

If two or more files with the same name (located in different folders) are open in List Mode, the names of the second will be prepended “(2)” and so on. The tool-tip for the file will display its full name including the path, allowing you to choose the desired one.

To display a document in the currently active frame, click the document name in the list.

The context menu has some common actions from the File menu.

Additionally there are filemanager actions to rename or delete the file. With Copy Filename you can copy the full path of the document to the clipboard.

You can sort the list in a few different ways by right clicking the list and selecting from the Sort By menu. The options are:

The document list will per default visualize your history by shading the entries for the most recent documents with a background color. If the document was edited, an extra color is blended in. The most recent document has the strongest color, so that you can easily find the documents you are working on. This feature can be disabled in the Documents page of the configuration dialog.

The default location of the document list in the Kate window is to the left of the editing area.

Kate's GDB plugin provides a simple frontend to the popular GNU Project Debugger.

You can enable the GDB plugin in the Plugins section of Kate's configuration.

For the plugin to work properly, you must have a source file (of any type supported by GDB) and an executable.

After these preparations are made, open the source file in Kate, enter the path to the executable in the Settings tab of the Debug View tool view, and select Debug → Start Debugging from the menu to get started.

All of these options are available in Kate's menus, and many are available on the Debug toolbar as well.

The Debug View tool view consists of several tabs:

The Call Stack tool view contains a list of the formatted backtrace returned from GDB.

The GDB Plugin's Call Stack tool view.

The Locals tool view contains a list of all currently loaded variables from the program and their corresponding values.

The GDB Plugin's Locals tool view.

Special thanks to Google Code-In 2011 participant Martin Gergov for writing much of this section.

When editing C or C++ code, this command will switch between a header file and its corresponding C/C++ file or vice versa.

For example, if you are editing myclass.cpp, this action will change to myclass.h if this file is available in the same folder.

Pairs of the following filename extensions will work:

The basic idea of the Project plugin is to have a structured list of files belonging to the project with the following properties:

Once the Project plugin is loaded in the Kate configuration page, open a file in a project and a sidebar appears that lists all projects as well as the project files as follows:

As you can see, the currently active project is “Kate”, and its contents is listed in the tree view. Clicking on files in the tree view opens the file in the editor. Further, a context menu is provided with which you can open files with other applications, such as a .ui file with Qt Designer.

You can filter the items by typing parts of the file name you are looking for into the search bar at the bottom of the list.

The idea is that you never have to open a project manually, this is even not supported at all. Hence, what happens if you open a file, the Project plugin quickly scans the folder and its parent folders for a .kateproject file. If found, the project is automatically loaded.

Furthermore, if you open another document in Kate, that belongs to another project, the Project plugin automatically switches the current project. So intuitively, always the correct project is active. Of course, you can also switch the currently active project using the combo box.

Kate has a Search and Replace plugin that shows up in the bottom sidebar. If a project is loaded, open the Search and Replace sidebar, and switch to the mode to search and replace in the current project:

With the knowledge of all files belonging to a project, the Project plugin provides simple auto completion facilities based on CTags. If a project is initially opened, CTags parses all project files in a background thread and saves the CTags information to /tmp. This file then is used to populate the auto completion popup in Kate.

In contrast, without this auto completion, Kate is only capable of showing auto completion items based on the words in the current file. So the auto completion provided by the Project plugin is much more powerful.

If CTags is missing, a passive popup warns you about this issue. It is also noteworthy, that the CTags file in /tmp is cleaned up when Kate exits, so the plugin does not pollute any folder with unwanted files.

As clicking on files in the tree view is not the fastest way to open a file, Kate provides a built-in quick open mechanism you can activate with Ctrl+Alt+O. What you the get is a list like this:

You can filter by typing parts of the file name you are looking for, and you can also navigate with the arrow keys and page up/down through the list. Hitting Enter activates the selected file, while Esc hides the quick open view again.

Further, the quick open remembers the previous file. So when you change to the quick open view the previously activated file is automatically selected and you just need to hit Enter, which comes very handy at times.

Another feature is to have support for the Build Plugin, so that it automatically is configured correctly.

Using Projects → Go To (Alt+1) you can open the Current Project view at the bottom of the editor window with four tabs:

The Projects menu allows you to switch between currently open projects. It is displayed by the Project plugin.

Kate's Search & Replace plugin allows you to search for text or regular expressions in many different files at once. You can search all open files, all the files in one directory and optionally its subdirectories, or in the active file. You can even filter by filename, for instance searching only files that end with a particular file extension.

Kate Snippets is a plugin used to save you some time by adding support for so-called “snippets” (re-usable source code, machine code or text). The plugin also supports code completion and JavaScript.

The panel for Kate Snippets.

In the panel you should see a list of snippet repositories, along with options to create your own, get them from the Internet or load them from a local file. Each repository has a checkbox that can be used to activate or deactivate it. There are also buttons to edit and delete existing repositories.

Creating and Editing Repositories

To create a new snippet repository, click Add Repository. You should now see a dialog that asks for the name of the snippet file, license and author. After choosing the desired options, click OK.

The repository editor interface.

The snippet repository editor contains the following options:

Name

Appears in the list of snippets in the tool view and is also searched when using the code completion feature.

Namespace

Prefix used while using code completion.

License

Select the license for you snippet repository.

Authors

Enter the name(s) of the author(s) of the snippet file.

File types

Select the file type(s) you want the snippet repository to apply to. It is set to “” by default, so the repository applies to all files. You can change it to something like C++ for instance, or select from a list by clicking on the items. You can specify more than one file type pressing the Shift while adding types.

Creating and Editing Snippets

The snippet editor interface.

Name

The name will be shown in the completion list.

Shortcut

Pressing this shortcut will insert the snippet into the document.

Snippets

The text your snippet will insert into the document.

A snippet can contain editable fields. They can be cycled by pressing Tab. The following expressions can be used in the template text to create fields:

${field_name} creates a simple, editable field. All subsequent occurrences of the same field_name create fields which mirror the contents of the first during editing.

${field_name=default} can be used to specify a default value for the field. default can be any JavaScript expression.

Use ${field_name=text} to specify a fixed string as default value.

${func(other_field1, other_field2, ...)} can be used to create a field which evaluates a JavaScript function on each edit and contains its contents. See the Scripts tab for more information.

${cursor} can be used to mark the end position of the cursor after everything else was filled in.

Scripts

JavaScript helper functions to use in your snippets.

All JavaScript functions should return the contents you want to place in a template field as a string.

Functions are called in a scope which contains the contents of all editable template fields as local variables. For example in a snippet containing ${field}, a variable called field will be present which contains the up-to-date contents of the template field. Those variables can either be used in the function statically or passed as arguments, by using the ${func(field)} or ${field2=func(field)} syntax in the snippet string.

You can use the Kate scripting API to get the selected text, full text, file name and more by using the appropriate methods of the document and view objects. Refer to the scripting API documentation for more information

Selecting from a list of snippets.

You can call snippets in two ways:

If the snippet contains variables (besides ${cursor}) the cursor will automatically go to the first occurrence of a variable and will wait for you to write something. When you are done, you can press Tab to move to the next variable, and so on.

Kate Snippets was written by Joseph Wenninger.

Special thanks to Google Code-In 2011 participant Martin Gergov for writing much of this section.

The Structured Query Language (SQL) is a specialized language for updating, deleting, and requesting information from databases.

The Kate SQL Plugin allows you to:

Select Add Connection from the SQL menu or toolbar, and then select the Qt database driver you want to use (including QSQLITE, QMYSQL3, QMYSQL, QODBC3, QODBC, QPSQL7, and QPSQL). If you can't see the desired driver, you need to install it. Then, press Next.

If the database you selected uses a file, simply indicate the database's location and press the Next button. If it requires connecting to a server, you must enter the hostname of the server, your username and password, and any other information that particular driver may require. Then press Next.

Finally, give a name to your connection, and press Finish.

You can browse your database using the Database schema browser tool view on the left. The information displayed varies depending on which database driver you are using.

To refresh this list, right-click anywhere in the tool view and select Refresh. To generate a query on any entry in the list, right-click on an entry, select Generate, and select the query type (SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, or DELETE) from the submenu that appears.

The SQL Plugin was written by Marco Mentasti.

Special thanks to Google Code-In 2011 participant Ömer Faruk ORUÇ for writing much of this section.

It allows developers to view symbols (functions, macros and structures) from source code.

By clicking the parsed information you can easily browse the code.

At the moment the following languages are supported:

C/C++, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, XSLT, Tcl/Tk, Fortran

Feature list:

You can configure the Terminal Tool View plugin on the Terminal page of the configuration dialog.

The following options are available:

You can use this plugin to execute shell commands. A selection will be used as argument for the shell command, the output will either replace the selection or copied to the clipboard.

Kate Plugin “XML Validation” copyright 2002 Daniel Naber (daniel.naber AT t-online.de).

Documentation copyright 2002 Daniel Naber

Start Kate and open the configuration dialog under Settings → Configure Kate.... Then select XML Completion which will appear in the Application → Plugins page and close the dialog. After that, select XML → Assign Meta DTD.... If your document contains no “DOCTYPE” or the doctype is unknown, you will have to select a meta DTD from the file system. Otherwise the meta DTD that matches the current document's DOCTYPE will be loaded automatically.

You can now use the plugin while typing your text:

You can test all functions and limitations by loading katexmltools/testcases.xml in qtpaths --paths GenericDataLocation into Kate and following the instructions.

Kate Plugin “XML Completion” copyright 2001,2002 Daniel Naber (daniel.naber AT t-online.de).

KDE SC 4 version copyright 2010 Tomáš Trnka

Documentation copyright 2001,2002 Daniel Naber