How I use Kate editor

If you have an M3/M4 and are stuck on XNU like me, and you want a something between the notes app and a whole Electron IDE, it turns out that Kate also supporte macOS

(Actually, a lot of KDE programs do, I was elated to find out I could use Dolphin as file manager when I was limited by Finder)

I think Kate strikes this really nice middleground. It starts up immediately as just a text editor, but you can push it as far as you want to

Kate's a pretty good editor. I've made an attempt to replace vscode/vscodium with it once before.

The article is right about vscode turning into proprietary mush. I use vscodium and have run into issues with plugins that require cpptools, while cpptools complains whenever you, or an extension you're using, accesses it in an editor other than vscode.

This is pretty much the exact same way I use Sublime (except the git diff stuff is done in Sublime Merge, which is a separate application)

I've tried switching to Kate a few times since I prefer open source tools, but it feels like a major step down UX-wise. My primary workstations have been Linux with KDE Plasma for many years, but I am not a huge fan of the KDE aesthetics (which seems to aim for maximizing clutter).

I'm generally not a picky person, but my text editor is by far my most-used tool, so it's an exception.

I don’t think it will dethrone Neovim for me, but this makes me wonder whether Kate could become my second editor and allow me to largely drop VS Code, especially with the DAP support. The session support also looks interesting.

One feature that is impossible to live without for me is Undo Tree. Unfortunately, the only editors that support it are Vim/Neovim and Emacs. I would love to switch to one of these modern editors, but not a single one of them supports this feature.

Big thread a year ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40032869

I‘m contemplating for a while to find a replacement for VSCode. I switched to it because Atom became too slow and it had great builtin support for most stuff. But I actually was never 100% happy. I usually split my work between bigger projects and smaller file edits. And VSCode was good for the second flow. But over the years and the popularity of LSPs it kinda became dump as well. I mean the fact that if one wants to edit a python or ruby file and simply wants code formatting and a semi smart intelli sense one needs to install an lsp plus plugin etc etc. Which used to work out of the box without bigger configuration. I work on different types of projects and need a fast and quick editor from time to time. VSCode used to be that for me. But now it’s bloated as a full IDE in some cases. Will look into Kate just to see what it has to offer.

there is one feature that I truly miss from notepad++ and couldn't find it in kate.

the feature is the option to bookmark all matching lines in the find dialog, then from the bookmarks submenu you can delete bookmarked lines or delete unbookmarked lines.

super useful, yet couldn't find it in any other editor.

> I remember having two CMake extensions where both had something I needed, but they both also overlap in some basic features, so it got very confusing.

The easy strictly equivalent solution is to just one extension. Or does Kate have a single included plugin that covers everything those two extensions cover?

Wow, that's an app name I haven't heard in quite some time! Glad to hear it is still alive and kicking.

I see it has a proper multicursor support, so that's nice. There are a few plugins in vscod(e/ium) I regularly use and would miss a lot - like converting between camel/kebab/snake/sentence case, generating sequence numbers/digits, and especially calculations. I'd be surprised if these minor things are supported... Still, long time ago it was already a very capable IDE, so I'm curious where it is now. I'll give it a spin...

Kate editor is a hidden gem.

I used Kate as my main editor several years back, before switching to Sam halfway through college, then to VS Code when I wanted debugging stuff. I'll have to give it another try, I always liked it. Its multi-cursor support still strikes me as being better than VS Code's.

The page doesn't say it, how well it handles very large files? Also, how does it handle editing files with various encodings? Asking this while having Notepad++ in mind.

Kate seems like yet another editor trying to be everything to everyone while mastering nothing. The author complains about VSCode's extensions clashing, but then proudly lists a dozen Kate plugins they use. That's not simplicity; it's the same complexity with different branding. And let's be honest - if your workflow requires JavaScript snippets to generate blog headers, you're not using a "simple" text editor anymore.

I've been using Kate for quick edits but never explored its deeper features. The LSP integration and session handling look particularly useful. Good to see a thoughtful workflow built around a lightweight editor that doesn't compromise on functionality.

Surprised to see so much love for Kate here. I've always felt it has too much UI clutter for to make for a good Notepad.exe alternative, but too few features to be a good VSCode alternative. It seems most default KDE apps suffer from issues like this, to the point where I ended up using for VSCode for everything on my Linux machine (before eventually switching to MacOS and just using the Notes app for everything that isn't code).