The KWrite Handbook

The KWrite Handbook

T.C. Hollingsworth

developer: Christoph Cullmann
Revision Applications 18.08 (2018-05-19)

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

KWrite is a text editor by KDE allowing you to edit one file at the time per window.


Introduction

KWrite is more than a text editor by KDE. It is meant to be a programmer's editor, and could be considered as at least a partial alternative to more powerful editors. It may be best used in conjunction with Konqueror or Dolphin for source file browsing for different languages. KWrite also works very well as a simple text editor. One of KWrite's main features is the colorized syntax, customized for many different programming languages such as: C/C++, Java™, Python, Perl, Bash, Modula 2, HTML, and Ada. KWrite has a single document interface (SDI) allowing you to edit one file at the time per window.

KWrite is a simple interface to the KatePart component also used by Kate, KDevelop, and other applications from KDE that require advanced text editing. Therefore, complete documentation for all the features of KWrite can be found in the KatePart Handbook.

Command Line Options

Command Line Options

Though KWrite may most often be started from the Plasma application starter, or a desktop icon, it can also be opened at the command line prompt of a terminal window. There are a few useful options that are available when doing this.

Many other applications that use KatePart offer similar command line options.

Specify a File

By specifying the path and name of a particular file the user can have KWrite open (or create) that file immediately upon startup. This option might look something like the following:

% kwrite
/home/myhome/docs/myfile.txt

Specify a file on the Internet

The above-mentioned method could even be used to open files on the Internet (if the user has an active connection at the time.) An example of this might look like the following:

% kwrite
ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/README

Other Command Line Options

The following command line help options are available

kwrite --help

This lists the most basic options available at the command line.

kwrite --author

Lists KWrite's authors in the terminal window

kwrite -v, --version

Lists version information for the application.

KWrite --license

Shows license information.

kwrite --desktopfile filename

The base file name of the desktop entry for this application.

This is in particular useful for wrapper applications and applications having in general multiple desktop files. Thus each desktop file can have its own command line for the Exec entry.

kwrite -e, --encoding encoding

Causes KWrite to use the specified encoding for the document.

kwrite -l, --line line

Navigate to the specified line after opening the document.

kwrite -c, --column column

Navigate to the specified column after opening the document.

kwrite -i, --stdin

Causes KWrite to read the document content from STDIN. This is similar to the common option - used in many command line programs, and allows you to pipe command output into KWrite.

Credits and License

Credits and License

KWrite Copyright 2001-2014 by the Kate team.

Based on the original KWrite, which was Copyright 2000 by Jochen Wilhelmy

Contributions:

  • Christoph Cullmann

  • Michael Bartl

  • Phlip

  • Anders Lund

  • Matt Newell

  • Joseph Wenninger

  • Jochen Wilhelmy

  • Michael Koch

  • Christian Gebauer

  • Simon Hausmann

  • Glen Parker

  • Scott Manson

  • John Firebaugh

This documentation is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.