# KDE User's Manual

&Lauri.Watts; &Lauri.Watts.mail;
2010-10-06
K Desktop Environment
kate
1

# `kate`

Advanced text editor for &kde;

    kate
    -s, --start
    name
    --startanon
    -n, --new
    -b, --block
    -p, --pid
    pid
    -e, --encoding
    name
    -l, --line
    line
    -c, --column
     column
    -i, --stdin
    -u, --use
    KDE Generic Options
    Qt Generic Options

## Description

&kate; is the &kde; Advanced Text Editor.

&kate; 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), and 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;.

## Options

`-s`, `--start` name

  Start &kate; with a given session.

`--startanon`

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

`-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.

`-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

`-c, --column` column

  Navigate to this column

`-i, --stdin`

  Read the contents of `stdin`

`-u, --use`

  Use an already running &kate; instance; default, only for compatibility

## See Also

More detailed user documentation is available from help:/kate (either enter this URL into &konqueror;, or run ``khelpcenter` `help:/kate``).

There is also further information available at the &kate; website.

## Examples

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 -u source.cpp

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

## Authors

The maintainer of &kate; is &Christoph.Cullmann; &Christoph.Cullmann.mail;. A comprehensive list of authors and contributors is available in the complete user manual mentioned above.