Chapter 2. The Fundamentals

If you have ever used a text editor, you will have no problem using Kate. In the next two sections, Starting Kate and in Working with Kate, we'll show you everything you need to get up and running quickly.

Starting Kate

You can start Kate from the K menu or from the command line.

From the Menu

Open the KDE program menu by clicking on the big K icon on the toolbar at the bottom left of your screen. This will raise the program menu. Move your cursor up the menu to the Utilities->Editors menu item. A list of available editors will appear. Choose Kate.

Unless you configure Kate not to, it will load the last files you edited. See Configuring Kate to learn how to toggle this feature on and off.

From the Command Line

You can start Kate by typing its name on the command line. If you give it a file name, as in the example below, it will open or create that file.

%kate myfile.txt

If you have an active connection, and permission, you can take advantage of KDE's network transparency to open files on the internet.

%kate ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/README_FIRST

Command Line Options

Kate accepts following command line options:

kate --help: This lists the most basic options available at the command line.
kate --help-qt: This lists the options available for changing the way Kate interacts with Qt™.
kate --help-kde: This lists the options available for changing the way Kate interacts with KDE.
kate -s --start name: Starts kate with the session name. The session is created if it does not exist already.
kate -u --use URL: Causes Kate to use and existing instance if there is one. If you want all documents to open in one kate instance, you can add this option to the default command in your kde application configuration, as well as create a shell alias in your command intepreter if it supports that.
kate -p --pid PID: Only reuses an instance with the specified PID (Process ID). Used with the --use option.
kate --encoding encoding URL: Uses the specified encoding for the document.
kate --line line URL: Navigates to the specified line after opening the document.
kate --column column URL: Navigates to the specified column after opening the document.
kate --stdin: Reads 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 Kate.
kate --help-all: This lists all of the command line options.
kate --author: Lists Kate's authors in the terminal window.
kate -v --version: Lists version information for Qt™, KDE, and Kate.
kate --license: Shows license information.

Drag and Drop

Kate uses the KDE Drag and Drop protocol. Files may be dragged and dropped onto Kate from the Desktop, Konqueror or some remote ftp site opened in one of Konqueror's windows.