Malcolm
Hunter

    malcolm.hunter@gmx.co.uk

Conversion to British English

# Configuring &kate;

## Overview

&kate; offers several means of tweaking the application to behave as desired. The most important ones are:

The Configuration Dialogue

  The main configuration tool, allowing you to configure the &kate; application, the editor component and the usage of plugins.

The Settings Menu

  Allows you to change often used settings, and to launch the configuration dialogues.

The View Menu

  Allows you to split the current frame, as well as to display the icons and line numbers pane for the currently edited document.

The embedded &konsole; is using the configuration defined in the &kcontrolcenter;, and may be configured by clicking the right mouse button and choosing from the Settings sub menu.

## The Main Configuration Dialogue

The &kate; configuration dialogue displays a tree of topics on the left, and a configuration page corresponding to the selected topic on the right. The tree groups the pages of the dialogue into logical groups.

### The &kate; group

This group contains pages to configure the main &kate; application

#### The General Page

Global Options for &kate;

Application Mode

  This group lets you choose between &kate; MDI and &kate; SDI mode, selecting the appropriate button.

  &kate; MDI (Multiple Document Interface), which is the default mode, makes &kate; use a single window for all open files. You can choose the document to edit from the File List (docked into the &kate; window by default) or by selecting the document from the Document menu.

  &kate; SDI (Single Document Interface) will make &kate; open each document in a window of its own, and the File List/File Selector will have a separate window.

  If you change this setting, you will need to restart &kate; for it to take effect.

At Startup

  These options determine how and if &kate; will restore your editing session when launched after a normal shutdown (if restored by the session manager, &kate; will always attempt to restore your session as close as possible to what it was when you last used &kate;).

  Reopen Files

    If this option is enabled, files open when you last closed &kate; will be reopened. Bookmarks will be restored, and the cursor position, icon border and line numbers settings for the last editor used with the document will be re-established

  Restore View Configuration

    If this option is enabled, &kate; will attempt to restore your frames exactly as you left them.

Restrict to single instance

  Enabling this means you can only have one running instance of &kate; running at any given time. If you attempt to start another one, the current instance will take over and also open files as requested. For example, if you use &kate; for displaying sources for web pages in Konqueror, they will all be opened in an existing instance of &kate; if this option is enabled.

Show Contents While Resizing Frames

  If this option is enabled, the windows will be fully repainted while dragging the frame splitters. If unchecked, a so-called rubber band (indicating the new size of the frame) will be used instead.

Sync Konsole with Active Document

  This will cause the built-in &konsole; to `cd` into the directory of the active document when launched and when a new document gets the focus. If not enabled, you have to do all your navigation in the &konsole; on your own.

Number of Recent Files

  Unsurprisingly, this allows you to decide how long the Open Recent files menu should grow.

### The Editor Group

This group contains all pages related to the editor component of &kate;

#### The Colours Page

This page allows you to change the background and selection background colours of the editor. Initially, &kate; will use the colours as set in the &kcontrolcenter; Look'n'Feel Colours page.

To change a colour, press the associated button and select the desired colour in the colour chooser.

Choosing the background colour may render Syntax Highlighted text unreadable. You should use a light colour for the background, and a dark colour for the selection background.

Otherwise, you will probably need to change the Default Styles.

#### The Fonts Page

This page allows you to choose the default fonts for &kate;. The settings will be used for the &kwrite; and for viewing text files in &konqueror; as well.

The page presents two tabs, one for the editor font and one for the printing font. Select a tab and choose the desired font. The default is to use the &kde; global setting for fixed font.

As it is not currently possible to use individual fonts for documents, nor to change the font for printing from the print dialogue, be careful. A fixed-width font is strongly recommended.

#### The Indent Page

This page allows you to change the behaviour of indentation.

##### Indent Options

Auto indent

  If checked, &kate; will automatically indent new lines equal to the previous line. If the previous line is blank, the nearest above line with contents is used.

Indent with Spaces

  If checked, &kate; will indent with spaces rather than tabs.

Backspace key indents

  If this is checked, &kate; will unindent equal to the nearest above line with contents when you press the Backspace key if the part of the line preceding the cursor contains only whitespace.

Tab key indents

  If this is checked, &kate; will indent the current line equal to the nearest above line with content when you press the Tab key, if the part of the line preceding the cursor contains only whitespace.

Keep extra spaces

  With this behaviour checked, &kate; will leave whitespace behind the cursor after indenting.

#### The Select Page

This page provides options for fine tuning the select behaviour of &kate;

##### Select Options

Persistent Selections

  When Persistent Selections is enabled, key input will not cause the selection to be removed/diminished.

  This option partly conflicts with the Overwrite Selection option. If both are enabled, pasting text or pressing any other keys than the arrow keys will cause the selection to be overwritten.

Overwrite Selection

  If this is enabled, any text insertion, whether typed or pasted will cause the selected text to be deleted and replaced with the inserted text.

#### The Edit Page

This page contains miscellaneous options for fine-tuning the behaviour of the &kate; editor component.

##### Editor Options

Word Wrap

  Word Wrap as used here means dynamically format the text by breaking lines at an appropriate place, rather than soft wrapping lines in the editor for easier reading.

  If enabled, &kate; will insert a line break as defined by the End of Line setting for the document when the line extends the length set in Wrap Words At option described below.

Wrap Words At

  This option decides the max length of lines if the Word Wrap option is enabled.

Replace Tabs with Spaces

  If enabled, &kate; will replace inserted Tab characters with a number of single whitespace characters as defined in Tab Width.

Remove trailing spaces

  If enabled, &kate; will remove any whitespace at the rear end of a line each time the cursor is moved off that line.

Tab/Indent Width

  Sets the tab width, which is also used to decide the amount of indentation when Auto Indent is enabled, or indentation is otherwise called for.

  Depending on the Indent settings indentation may be caused by pressing the Tab and Backspace keys, and activating the Edit Indent menu entry will call for indent as well.

Auto Brackets

  If this is enabled, &kate; will automatically insert a right bracket immediately to the right of the cursor when a left bracket is inserted from the keyboard. The supported bracket types are (, {, [and <

Group undos

  If enabled, &kate; will group any number of similar editing actions (for example typing, backspacing, pasting) in one entry in the undo history, so they can all be undone at once.

Show Tabs

  If enabled, &kate; will draw a small dot at the start of a Tab character in the editor to indicate its presence.

Smart Home

  This will make &kate; move the cursor to the first non-whitespace character of the current line rather than to the absolute beginning, when the Home key (or other key assigned to that function) is pressed.

Wrap Cursor

  If enabled, moving the cursor past the end of a line will cause it to continue to the next/previous line if any.

  If not enabled, the cursor cannot be moved right of the beginning of the line, but it may be moved past the end of line, and when text is inserted &kate; will automatically insert whitespace up to that position. This is sometimes very handy for programmers, for example.

#### The Keyboard Page

Here you can configure the keyboard shortcuts for the internal commands of the &kate; editor component. These includes commands for moving around in the document and selecting text. For keys related to copying and pasting text, see The Configure Keys Dialogue

You may change the keys for a command, or add an alternate key.

##### To change the key(s) for a command, follow this procedure:

1. Select the command for which you want to configure the keys.

2. Choose the None option in the pane below the list if you don't want a key for this command.

   Choose the Default option to use the default key(s) for the command

   Choose the Custom option to select a custom key for the command, or set an alternate one.

3. If you choose the Custom option, the key entering button at the right of the pane will be enabled. To set a key, press it. The &kde; Define Shortcut Dialogue will appear. In this dialogue:

4. 1. Choose whether to set the default or alternate key. Default does not mean that you change the application default for this action, rather it sets the custom standard key for it.

   2. Press the desired key sequence, it will be visualised for you in the dialogue for your confirmation.

      If you are of an adventurous nature, try playing around with the Multikey option. Using it will allow you to have &Emacs;-like key sequences (one key enters a group, the next performs the action), apart from the fact that instead of just doing the job, &kde; will pop up a menu to choose from in an undefined and most likely inappropriate place. You will now be in no doubt as to whether pressing the next key in the sequence will work, or you have to type the menu accelerator (both will work).

#### The Spelling Page

This page allows you to configure how &kspell; behaves with &kate;

#### The Highlighting Page

This page allows you to fine tune the colour and syntax type selection of &kate;

For more in depth information on the syntax highlighting system, see ??

The page consists of two tabs, one for setting the Default styles and one for managing the Highlight Modes. Both tabs display a list of contexts in which the default colours and font are used to visualise the look of each style. The context name is painted using the current properties of the context.

The list has four or five columns, each with the following purpose:

Context

  Displays the context name, painted using the style properties for the context.

Bold

  The state of this checkbox decides if the context should be rendered using a boldface font.

Italic

  The state of this checkbox decides if the context should be rendered using italic font.

Normal

  This button displays the colour for drawing the style in normal mode, when the text is not selected that is. To change the colour, click the button.

Selected

  This button displays the colour for drawing the style when the text is selected. To change the colour, click the button.

Using Default

  This checkbox, only available in the Highlight Modes tab shows if the style is using its default values. It will automatically become unchecked if you change any properties of the style. Check it to reset a style to using defaults.

##### The Default Styles Tab

To change any of the default styles, set its properties as desired.

##### The Highlight Modes Tab

Here you can change the most important properties of each available highlight mode. First, use the Highlight dropdown to choose a mode to work on.

Highlight modes are initially chosen based on the &MIME; type and extension of the file. To change the list for the current selection, edit the File Extensions and Mime Types entries. Alternatively, press the wizard button to the right of the Mime Types entry. This will show a dialogue displaying all available &MIME; types to choose from. Using it will edit the &MIME; types as well as the file extensions.

The &MIME; type chooser dialogue displays a tree of available &MIME; types, with a description and the patterns for the &MIME; type. To include a &MIME; type, check the box beside it.

You can change the style properties of any context as described above.

At the bottom of the tab, below the highlight properties, you see a button labelled Download. Pressing it will attempt to connect to the &kate; website and fetch a list of available syntax highlight modes which you can update or add.

### The Plugins Group

This group contains pages related to plugins. Apart from the Manager configuration page, some plugins provide individual configuration options. For information on these, see the documentation for the individual plugins.

#### The Plugin Manager Page

This page provides the means of loading/unloading plugins, and minimal information about individual plugins.

To load an unloaded plugin, select it in the Available Plugins pane and use the arrow buttons to move it to the Loaded Plugins pane.

To unload a loaded plugin, select it in the Loaded Plugins pane and use the arrow buttons to move it to the Available buttons pane.

To view a minimal description and information about a plugin, select it and the information will be available below the lists.