KATE(1)

💅 KATE(1) — the Kate User's Manual, but make it a group chat

okay so bestie, you're holding the manual page for kate — that's Kate, the Advanced text editor by KDE. Yes, this whole page is the Kate User's Manual. Yes, you're gonna read it. Yes, you're gonna slay. 🎀

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🌸 NAME

kate — Advanced text editor by KDE. That's the whole name section. Short, sweet, iconic.

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✨ SYNOPSIS

kate [-s, --start name] [--startanon] [-n, --new] [-b, --block] [-p,
     --pid pid] [-e, --encoding name] [-l, --line line] [-c, --column
     column] [-i, --stdin] [--tempfile] [file]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION

Kate is the KDE Advanced Text Editor. 💖

She also provides the editor part for various applications, under the name KWrite.

Some of Kate's many features include:

• configurable syntax highlighting for languages ranging from C and C++ to HTML to bash scripts
• the ability to create and maintain projects
• a multiple document interface (MDI)
• a self-contained terminal emulator

But Kate is more than a programmer's editor. Its ability to open several files at once makes it ideal for editing UNIX®'s many configuration files. This document was written in Kate. (no cap. literally. this manpage, written in Kate. main character energy. 👑)

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👑 OPTIONS

• -s, --start name — Start Kate with a given session. Pick your vibe, she remembers it.
• --startanon — Start Kate with a new anonymous session. Implies -n. Sneaky little implication, we love her.
• -n, --new — Force start of a new Kate instance (is ignored if start is used and another Kate instance already has the given session opened), forced if no parameters and no URLs are given at all.
• -b, --block — If using an already running Kate instance, block until it exits, if URLs given to open. So she'll just wait there. Patient queen.
• -p, --pid pid — Only try to reuse kate instance with this pid (is ignored if start is used and another Kate instance already has the given session opened).
• -e, --encoding name — Set encoding for the file to open.

You can use this to force a file opened in utf-8 format, for instance. (The command iconv -l provides a list of encodings, which may be helpful to you. 🫶)

• -l, --line line — Navigate to this line. Teleport. ✨
• -c, --column column — Navigate to this column. Teleport, but sideways.
• -i, --stdin — Read the contents of stdin. Let her eat from the pipe. 🍓
• --tempfile — The files/URLs opened by the application will be deleted after use. ⚠️ yes, deleted. Gone. Poof. Know that before you do it, bestie.
• file — File to open. The whole point, honestly.

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🔥 SEE ALSO

• More detailed user documentation is available from help:/kate (either enter this URL into Konqueror, or run khelpcenter help:/kate).
• kf6options(7)
• qt6options(7)
• There is also further information available at the Kate website[1].

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💜 EXAMPLES

🌈 open a file at a specific spot in an existing window

To open a file named source.cpp at column 15, line 25, in an existing Kate window, you could use:

kate -c 15 -l 25 source.cpp

🧚 opening stuff over the network (iykyk)

If you have an active internet connection, you can take advantage of KDE's network transparency to open a file from an FTP site. If you do not have write permission on the remote server, the file will be opened read only and you will be prompted for a local filename to save to if you make changes. If you do have write permission, changes will be saved transparently over the network.

kate ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/README

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🫶 AUTHORS

The maintainer of Kate is Christoph Cullmann <cullmann@kde.org>. A comprehensive list of authors and contributors is available in the complete user manual mentioned above.

🌟 AUTHOR

Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>

• Author.

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📝 NOTES

1. Kate website https://kate-editor.org/

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and that's the whole thing, bestie — every flag, every default, every file path, nothing skipped, nothing invented, periodt. 💅✨

this little love letter to Kate came to you from KDE Gear 21.08, dated 2021-07-12, and the page itself is KATE(1). go open a file. she's waiting. 🦋💖