Users 

In KDE >= 4.10, Kate Part’s scripting changed a bit. The changes are already documented in the Kate handbook, but we’ll quickly have a look into it now anyway.

Prior to KDE SC 4.10, scripts in Kate Part always had to contain the “type” in the scripting header, like indentation or command. This was changed to simply using different folders (system wide or in your $HOME kde folder) as follows:

In KDE 4.10, Kate Part got a new MessageInterface. The idea of this interface is to have a standardized way of showing notifications in a non-intrusive way, similar to how KMessageWidget in kdelibs works. Using the MessageInterface is extremly easy, for instance to show a quick notification, you write

KTextEditor::Message *message = new KTextEditor::Message(KTextEditor::Message::Positive,
                                                         "Code successfully reformated.");
document->postMessage(message);Read More
                
              

Loading huge files over the internet may take quite a long time. In KDE 4.10, Kate Part will show a passive message after 1 second that tells you the file is still being loaded, and, if wanted, the user can abort the loading process. It looks like this:

This also fixes bug #128273. Again, cookies go to Christoph ;)

Update (2014-10-18): Auto-Loading Projects in Kate 5

Introducing the Projects Plugin for KDE SC 4.10

The basic idea of the Projects plugin is to have a structured list of files belonging to the  project with the following properties:

1. provide a structured view of the files
2. make it easy and very fast to open and switch projects
3. support search & replace for a project
4. provide simple auto completion
5. make it simple to quickly open files in the project
6. support for building the project

We’re going to address all these points now.

Another quick update: Jowenn just implemented a decent tool tip that displays the current view line while scrolling, a wish from 9 years ago. Mandatory screenshot (pimped with my “awesome” Gimp skills):

Up to KDE 4.9, Kate Part had support to remove trailing spaces in two ways:

1. Remove trailing spaces while editing
2. Remove trailing spaces on save

The reasoning behind removing trailing spaces while editing is that when working on a document, we want to keep our own changes clean of trailing spaces. This way, we can for instance provide patches that are not cluttered with whitespace changes, and we just change lines that we really want to change.

KDE has all these little nifty features, and – guess what – Kate has them, too. Here, we’ll have a look at how to delete a file with Kate. We’ll start with opening the file we want to delete. Example:

Next, we open the menu File > Open With and choose Other… as follows:

Recently I’ve blogged about the usage of KMessageWidget in the data recovery process in Kate Part. Finally, we decided to stick with KMessageWidget, since it is a standard kdelibs widget, used by a lot of KDE applications. Besides, it is visually appealing and attracts the user’s attention. In KDE SC 4.10, it will look like this:

Now if you recover the data, it may happen that the swap file is broken, e.g. because it was accidently manipulated for whatever reason. Then you get notified like this:

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.