Common 

Hello everyone! In this post i am going to introduce the new Scripting IDE Plugin for Kate. Although scripting KatePart via ECMAScript is a powerful feature that has been available for quite some time now, it is still rarely used. In order to make it appealing for a wider public, the Script IDE aims at supporting the user with the process of creating and managing scripts.

The Plugin mainly consists of a tree view which shows currently available scripts, as well as functions contained in these scripts.

Additional scripts can be imported and new scripts can be created via a dialog, which requests necessary information about the script. Supported is the creation of all three types of scripts used in KPart: indentation scripts, command line scripts and API scripts. Further, help for command line scripts will be editable via the GUI.

After i have finished some crucial refactoring, the future plan for Scripting IDE features involves auto-completion for available APIs in the document view, as long as the Script IDE Plugin is loaded. Also, some restructuring of the way KPart handles scripts will most likely be necessary.

After some days of more hacking on the plugin, there current state is already nice for my daily use.

A simple file like

{
     "name": "Kate"
   , "files": [ { "git": 1 } ]
}

defines already the complete project for the kate.git.

If you open any file with Kate inside your local kate.git clone (and the project plugin from master branch is loaded), Kate will auto-open the project and highlight the file you just opened there in the tree. No need to think about opening some project in the menu, just open the file you want to start working at and start. The project plugin won’t get into your way or require additional steps.

After a bit toying around, the first version of project management plugin has landed in the master branch of the kate.git.

First time I developed a new feature in a feature-clone in my scratch space on git.kde.org. Very cool, KDE sysadmins did a GREAT job with that stuff: easy to setup and use ;)

Now, people wanting to try out that, just clone our kate.git and compile the master branch.

Some years ago the Kate team introduced the “Session” feature.

This allows you easily to keep around different Kate sessions for different work tasks, like coding, web design, writing, …

Whereas I used that feature a lot at start during my normal daily work, I kind of no longer used it already since some years.

For my normal work pattern: Checkout a project, fix something in it or code an extension, then hop over to the next one, the session feature doesn’t really provide the right workflow.

The Kate homepage will move to a new faster server.

There will be some downtime in the next days, as DNS update will take some time and stuff needs to be setup on the new machine.

Hope we are back with an even faster homepage afterwards ;)

Hi,

just yesterday I got asked by one long time contributor, if he can at all join the KDE e.V. or if he needs to do something special for that. He thought it would be more an invitation only club.

It’s not ;) Anybody who does contribute to KDE can join us.

KDE e.V. definition from its homepage:
“KDE e.V. is a registered non-profit organization that represents the KDE Community in legal and financial matters.”

I’m a Python newbie, so if you are at least that good :-D, you should be able to dive in and write useful Python plugins for your favourite editor too! This is the first in what I hope will be a series of notes and tutorials to help you along the way.

Where can I find examples to steal from inspire me?

Any good developer knows that a good way to launch into a new area is to look at examples, so here is a list of places I’ve encountered.

With KDE SC 4.9 around the corner and according to tradition, it’s time to have a look at what’s new in Kate.

**Improved Support for Custom Color Schemas
**

• improved “Colors” tab in the “Fonts & Colors” config page
• configurable colors: search & replace, code folding, indentation line,
• schema export and import honor background colors (bug #291868) and font
• “highlight selection” plugin and “search and replace” plugin now use search & replace colors from Kate’s color schema

Line Modification System

KDE 4.9 has branched, and so the Pâté plugin “host” for Python plugins has moved from Kate’s playground to be a mainstream plugin. Since a plugin-for-plugins might be a bit confusing, here is a quick tour of how it is managed and works, and especially a few rough edges it still has.

NOTE If you’ve installed this from a package, hopefully your distro will have added kate.so under PyKDE4 as needed, but if you are building from source, see the notes at the end of this post.