# 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 will show you everything you need to get up and running quickly.

## Starting &kate;

You can start &kate; from the application launcher or from the command line.

### From the Menu

Open the &kde; program menu by clicking on the application launcher icon on the toolbar at the bottom left of your screen. This will raise a menu. Move your cursor up the menu to the Applications Utilities Advanced Text Editor &kate; menu item.

### 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

To change the directory for temporary files, which defaults to `/tmp` set the `TMPDIR` environment variable before starting &kate;, ⪚

    %mkdir /tmp/kate -p && export TMPDIR=/tmp/kate && kate

#### Command Line Options

&kate; accepts following command line options:

``kate` `--help``

- This lists the options available at the command line.

``kate` `-s` `--start` `name``

- Starts kate with the session `name`. The session is created if it does not exist already. If a &kate; instance running the specified session exists, the specified files are loaded in that instance.

``kate` `-p` `--pid` `PID``

- Only reuses an instance with the specified PID (Process ID).

``kate` `-e` `--encoding` `encoding` `URL``

- Uses the specified encoding for the document.

``kate` `-l` `--line` `line` `URL``

- Navigates to the specified line after opening the document.

``kate` `-c` `--column` `column` `URL``

- Navigates to the specified column after opening the document.

``kate` `-i` `--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` `--startanon``

- Start &kate; with a new anonymous session, implies `-n`.

``kate` `-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.

``kate` `-b` `--block``

- If using an already running &kate; instance, block until it exits, if URLs given to open.

  You can use &kate; with this option as editor for typing in commit messages for version control systems like Git or Subversion. These systems expect to block the editor till you have entered your message, because they then open the temporary file, which would be empty if kate immediately returned to the caller.

  This option is also needed with KIO (&kde; Input/Output), if you open a remote file (which has been downloaded to a temporary) and should be reuploaded, after you saved it.

``kate` `--tempfile``

- When used, the specified files are treated as temporary files and deleted (if they are local files and you have sufficient permissions) when closed, unless they were modified since they were opened.

``kate` `--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.

``kate` `--author``

- Lists &kate;'s authors in the terminal window.

``kate` `-v` `--version``

- Lists version information for &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, the filemanager &dolphin; or some remote ftp site opened in one of &dolphin;'s windows.

## Working with &kate;

Quick Start will show you how to toggle four simple options that will let you configure some of &kate;'s more powerful features right away. Shortcuts lays out some of the default keystroke shortcuts for those who can't or don't want to use a mouse.

### Quick Start

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 &LMB; on the tool buttons in the sidebar to toggle this tool view on and off.

### Shortcuts

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

F1 | Help
&Shift;F1 | What's this?
&Ctrl;N | New document
&Ctrl;L | Save All
&Ctrl;O | Open a document
&Ctrl;&Alt;O | Quick Open
&Ctrl;&Shift;F | Full Screen Mode
&Ctrl;&Shift;, | Configure &kate;
&Ctrl;W / &Ctrl;&Esc; | Close
&Ctrl;Q | Quit - close active copy of editor
&Ctrl;&Alt;&Shift;F | Show Sidebars
&Ctrl;&Shift;T | Split Horizontal
&Ctrl;&Shift;L | Split Vertical
F8 | Next Split View
&Shift;F8 / &Ctrl;&Esc; | Previous Split View
&Ctrl;&Shift;R | Close Current View
&Alt;&Right; | Next Tab
&Alt;&Left; | Previous Tab

Additionally you can use the shortcuts provided by the &katepart; component and by all activated &kate; plugins.

## Working With the &kate; MDI

### Overview

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.

#### The Main Window

The &kate; Main Window is a standard &kde; application window, with the addition of side bars containing tool views. It has a menubar with all the common menus, and some more, and a toolbar providing access to commonly used commands.

The most important part of the window is the editing area, by default displaying a single text editor component, in which you can work with your documents.

The docking capabilities of the window is used for the tool windows of any plugin enabled in the settings dialog.

Tool views can be positioned in any sidebar, to move a tool right click its sidebar button and select from the &RMB; menu

A tool view can be marked as persistent in the &RMB; menu for its sidebar button. The sidebar can contain more tools at one time so that when a tool is persistent other tools can be shown simultaneously.

If a plugin has configuration options you can use the first item in the context menu to open the corresponding page in &kate;'s settings dialog.

### The Editor area

&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.

## Using Sessions

Sessions is how &kate; lets you keep more than one list of files and GUI configuration around. You can have as many named sessions as you want, and you can use unnamed or anonymous sessions for files you want to use only once. Currently &kate; can save the list of open files, and the general window configuration in the session; future versions of &kate; may add more features that can be saved in sessions. With the introduction of sessions, &kate; also allows you to open any number of instances of the application instead of just one as it used to do as the default behavior.

Sessions are supported in three areas:

- Command line options that lets you select and start sessions when launching kate from the command line.

- The Sessions menu that lets you switch, save, start and manage your sessions.

- Configuration options that lets you decide how sessions generally should behave.

When starting a new session, the GUI configuration of Default Session is loaded. To save window configuration in the default session, you need to enable saving window configuration in the sessions configuration page of the configuration dialog and then load the default session, set up the window as desired and save the session again.

When a named session is loaded, &kate; will display the session name at the start of the window title, which then has the form "`Session Name`: `Document name or &URL;` - &kate;"

When opening files on the command line with `--start `name`` or if a session is selected using the session chooser, the specified session is loaded prior to the files specified on the command line. To open files from the command line in a new, unnamed session, configure kate to start a new session as default in the session page of the configuration dialog or use `--start` with an empty string: `''`.

Since &kate; 2.5.1 the PID of the current instance is exported to the environment variable `KATE_PID`. When opening files from the built in terminal Kate will automatically select the current instance if nothing else is indicated on the command line.

## Getting Help

### With &kate;

This manual

- Offers detailed documentation on all menu commands, configuration options, tools, dialogs, plugins &etc; as well as descriptions of the &kate; window, the editor and various concepts used in the application.

  Press F1 or use the Help &kate; Handbook menu topic to view this manual.

What's This Help

- What's This help offers immediate help with single elements of graphical windows, such as buttons or other window areas.

  We strive to provide What's This help for any elements for which it makes sense. It is available throughout the configuration dialog, and in many other dialogs as well.

  To employ What's This help, press &Shift;F1 or use the Help What's This menu item to enable What's This mode. The cursor will turn into an arrow with a question mark, and you can now click any element in the window to read the What's This help for that element, if it is available.

Help Buttons in Dialogs

- Some dialogs have a Help Button. Pressing it will start the &khelpcenter; and open the relevant documentation.

### With Your Text Files

&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;.

### Articles on &kate;

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