KDE 

After the first initial status bar integration into the KatePart, we thought a bit more about what users might expect. Looking at the competition, one common feature is to allow quick-switching the indentation settings. Joseph gave that a try and we now have an even better version available in the KF5 KTextEditor framework. Mandatory screenshot (KWrite, Kate or other applications using it will look the same), updated version after feedback below:(Update: Using now again non-bold + Line/Column swapped with status)

Just started to introduce a default status bar to KatePart. Instead of forcing all applications to implement an own one with varying quality and features, it provides a default status bar that is an improved variant of the status bar of the Kate application. Now Kate and KWrite have exactly the same features there ;) If the host application doesn’t want that, the KTextEditor interface allows to deactivate it completely. Read More

Here we sit, in Barcelona, hacking away at KTextEditor & Kate. During the first 2 days, we already got some stuff done, like cleaning up KTextEditor interfaces and port more parts to KF5 (like ctags plugin, sql plugin, …). More and more, KTextEditor & Kate get into a usable state for frameworks ;) It is really good to have some free days in a nice location to focus on that goal! Read More

This is a follow-up to Aaron’s blog Frameworks 5: Timing is everything, put into the perspective of Kate and the KTextEditor interfaces. In short, Aaron suggests application developers the following: When Frameworks 5 has a firm release schedule, then it makes sense to start coordinating application releases targets with that and syncing up development cycles. I agree with this entirely, provided it’s really about applications. In the context of Kate, this is not the case, since the term ‘Kate’ usually also refers to the ‘KTextEditor’ interfaces along with its implementation ‘Kate Part’. Read More

Hi, a long time ago, the license of most parts of Kate/KWrite/KatePart/KTextEditor was LGPLv2+ (in the old time, where it was named KWritePart/Kant/…, the original KWrite had that license originally, at least all parts of the component of it). Then, we changed that to be LGPLv2 (only). It seems, that was a poor choice, as we now run in v2 vs. v3 vs. any later version problems. Most parts of the code are easy to relicense, as the contributors either acknowledged the request to change the license to that to the Kate team (on kwrite-devel@kde. Read More

In KDE 4, you can open a new window for Kate via “View -> New Window”. This won’t start a new application instance but just add an other Kate main window to the current instance (which shows the same documents & session & projects). This is kind of complex to handle internally and we think about dropping that behavior and instead launching just an other Kate application instance if you trigger that menu action. Read More

After the initial porting of KTextEditor interfaces and KatePart, now the Kate application itself runs on KF5, too. It still has a LOT of issues (and I marked all commented out pieces with FIXME KF5), but at least, it launches and loads the essential file tree plugin and allows you to open files via the “Open” action. Any help in fixing the remaining issues is welcome (and removing deprecated cruft), but keep in mind, it might eat all the files you edit :) Read More

After starting the “frameworks” branch in kate.git more than a week ago but doing not much beside an initial KTextEditor compile & link port I felt a big guilty ;) Given a lot of people blog about the progress of programs X and Y for Qt 5.2 and KDE Frameworks 5 I guess it is time that KatePart joins this club. Some hours later, a ‘working’ version of KatePart and KWrite have landed in the “frameworks” branch of kate. Read More

Recently, there was a dot story about Frameworks 5: Started in spring of 2011, the KDE software stack is undergoing a heavy split. The idea is to modularize the KDE libraries into lots of rather small units. Each unit has well-defined dependencies, depending on whether it’s in the tier 1, tier 2, or tier 3 layer, and depending on whether it provides plain functionality, integration, or a solution. If you haven’t yet, please read the article on the dot for a better understanding. Read More

KDE has a very handy feature to switch keyboard layouts on the fly. This is for instance useful if you use the German keyboard layout by default, and the US layout for programming. To enable keyboard layout switching, go into System Settings > Input Devices (category Hardware) > Keyboard item > Layouts tab: Here, ‘[x] Configure layouts‘ is checked, enabling the list view. I added the German keyboard layout, and then the English (US) layout. Read More