&Anders.Lund; &Anders.Lund.mail;Working with the &kate; editorOverviewThe &kate; editor is the editing area of the &kate; window. This
editor is also used by &kwrite;, and it can be used in &konqueror; for
displaying text files from your local computer, or from the
network.The editor is composed of the following components:The editing areaThis is where the text of your document is located.The Scroll barsThe scroll bars indicate the position of the visible part of
the document text, and can be used to move around the
document. Dragging the scrollbars will not cause the insertion cursor
to be moved.The scroll bars are displayed and hidden as required.The Icon BorderThe icon border is a small pane on the left side of the editor,
displaying a small icon next to marked lines.You can set or remove a bookmark in a visible line by
clicking the &LMB; in the icon border next to that line.The display of the icon border can be toggled using the
ViewShow Icon
Border menu item.The Line Numbers PaneThe Line numbers pane shows the line numbers of all visible
lines in the document.The display of the Line Numbers Pane can be toggled using the
ViewShow Line
Numbers menu item.The Folding PaneThe folding pane allows you to collapse or expand foldable blocks
of lines. The calculation of the foldable regions are done according to
rules in the syntax highlight definition for the document.Also in this Chapter:Navigating in the
Text Working with the
SelectionCopying and
Pasting TextFinding and
Replacing TextUsing
BookmarksAutomatically
Wrapping TextUsing automatic indentingNavigating in the TextMoving around in the text in &kate; is like in most graphical text
editors. You move the cursor using the arrow keys and the
Page Up, Page Down, Home and
End keys in combination with the Ctrl and
Shift modifiers. The Shift key is always used
to generate a selection, while the Ctrl key have different
effects on different keys:
For the Up and Down keys it
means scroll rather than move the cursor.For the Left and Right
keys it means skip words rather than characters.for the Page Up and Page Down
keys it means move to the visible edge of the view rather than browse.For the Home and End keys it
means move to the beginning or end of the document rather than the beginning or
end of the line.&kate; also provides you with a way to quickly jump to a matching brace
or paranthese: Place the cursor on the inside of a parenthese or brace
character, and press Ctrl6
to jump to the matching parenthese or brace.In addition you can use
bookmarks to quickly jump to
positions that you define on your own.Working with the SelectionThere are two basic ways of selecting text in &kate;: using the
mouse, and using the keyboard.To select using the mouse, hold down the &LMB; while dragging
the mouse cursor from where the selection should start, to the desired
end point. The text gets selected as you drag.Double-clicking a word will select that word.Triple-clicking in a line will select the entire line.If &Shift; is held down while clicking, text will be
selected:If nothing is already selected, from the text cursor
position to the mouse cursor position.If there is a selection, from and including that
selection to the mouse cursor positionWhen selecting text by dragging the mouse, the
selected text is copied to the clipboard, and can be pasted by
clicking the middle mouse button in the editor, or in any other
application to which you want to paste the text.
To select using the keyboard, hold down the &Shift; key while
using the navigation keys (The Arrow keys, Page Up,
Page Down, Home and
End, possibly in combination with &Ctrl; to extend
the move of the text cursor).See also the section Navigating in the Text in this
Chapter.To Copy the current selection, use the
EditCopy menu item or the keyboard
shortcut (defaults to &Ctrl;C).To Deselect the current selection, use the
EditDeselect menu item, or the
keyboard shortcut (default is &Ctrl;&Shift;A), or click
with the &LMB; in the editor.Using Block SelectionWhen Block Selection is enabled, you can make vertical
selections in the text, meaning selecting limited columns from
multiple lines. This is handy for working with tab separated lines for
example.Block Selection can be toggled using the
EditToggle Block
Selection menu item. The default keyboard
shortcut is F4Using Overwrite SelectionIf Overwrite Selection is enabled, typing or pasting text into
the selection will cause the selected text to be replaced. If not
enabled, new text will be added at the position of the text
cursor.Overwrite Selection is enabled by default.To change the setting for this option, use the Select Page of the Configuration Dialog.Using Persistent SelectionWhen Persistent selection is enabled, typing characters or
moving the cursor will not cause the Selection to become
deselected. This means that you can move the cursor away from the
selection and type text.Persistent Selection is disabled by default.Persistent Selection can be enabled in the Select Page of the Configuration Dialog.If Persistent Selection and Overwrite Selection are both
enabled, typing or pasting text when the text cursor is inside the
selection will cause it to be replaced and deselected.Copying and Pasting TextTo copy text, select it and use the
EditCopy menu item. Additionally,
selecting text with the mouse will cause selected text to be copied to
the X selection.To paste the text currently in the clipboard, use the
EditPaste
menu item.Additionally, text selected with the mouse may be pasted by
clicking the middle mouse button at the
desired position.If you are using the &tde; desktop, you can retrieve earlier
copied text from any application using the &klipper; icon in the
&kicker; icon tray.Finding and Replacing TextThe Find Text and Replace
Text DialogsThe Find and Replace Text dialogs in &kate; are very much the
same, except the Replace Text dialog offers the means of entering a
replacement string along with a few extra options.The dialogs offer the following common options:Text to FindThis is where to enter the search string. The interpretation of the string
depends on some of the options described below.Regular ExpressionIf checked, the search string is interpreted as a regular
expression. A button for using a graphical tool to create or edit the
expression will be enabled.See Regular
Expressions for more on these.Case InsensitiveIf enabled, the search will be case insensitive.Whole Words OnlyIf checked, the search will only match if there is a word
boundary at both ends of the string matching, meaning not an
alphanumeric character - either some other visible character or a line
end.From cursorIf checked, the search will start at cursor position, otherwise it will
start at the beginning of the first line in the document.Find BackwardsIf checked, the search will look for the first match above the
starting point, either cursor position or the beginning of the
document, if the From Beginning option is
enabled.The Replace Text Dialog offers some
additional options:Replace WithThis is where to enter the replacement
string.Selected TextThis option is disabled if no text is selected, or if the
Prompt on Replace
option is enabled. If checked, all matches of the search string within
the selected text will be replaced with the replace string.Prompt on ReplaceIf checked, a small dialog will prompt you for what to
do for each time a match is found. It offers the following options:
YesActivate this to replace the current match (which is
selected in the editor).NoActivate to skip the current match, and try to find another one.AllActivate to cancel prompting, and just replace all
matches.CloseActivate this to skip the current match and end the
searching.There is currently no way to use minimal matching when searching
for a regular expression. This will be added in a future version of
&kate;Finding TextTo find text, launch the Find Text Dialog
with &Ctrl;For
from the EditFind... menu item, enter a
search string, set the options as desired and hit
Ok. If the search was started at cursor position and no
match was found before reaching the end (or beginning if you are searching
backward) of the document, you will be asked if you want to wrap the search.
If a match is found it is selected and the Find
Text Dialog is hidden, but stay tuned, finding further
matches is very easy:To find the next match in the search direction, use the
EditFind
Next command or press
F3.To find the next match in the opposite direction, use the
EditFind
Previous command or press &Shift;F3.If no match is found before reaching the document end (or beginning if you
are searching backward) , you will be asked if you want to wrap the search.
Replacing TextTo replace text, launch the Replace text
Dialog using the EditReplace command, or the
&Ctrl;R shortcut,
enter a search string and optionally a replace string (if the replace
string is empty, each match will be removed), set
the options as desired and
hit the Ok button.If you are using a regular expression to find the text to replace, you can
employ backreferences to reuse text captured in parenthesized subpatterns of the expression.See for more
on those.You can do find, replace and
ifind (incremental search) from the
command line.Using BookmarksThe bookmarks feature allows you to mark certain lines, to be
able to easily find them again.You can set or remove a bookmark in a line in two ways:Move the insertion cursor to the line and activate the
BookmarksToggle
Bookmark (&Ctrl;B) command.Click in the Icon Border next to the line.Bookmarks are available in the Bookmarks
menu. The individual bookmarks are available as menu items, labeled
with the line number of the line with the bookmark, and the first few
characters of the text in the line. To move the insertion cursor to
the beginning of a bookmarked line, open the menu and select the
bookmark.To quickly move between bookmarks or to the next/previous bookmark,
use the BookmarksNext (CtrlPage Down) or BookmarksPrevious
(CtrlPage Up) commands.Automatically Wrapping textThis feature allows you to have the text formatted in a very simple way: the text will be wrapped,
so that no lines exceed a maximum number of characters per line, unless there is a longer string of
non-whitespace characters.To enable/disable it, check/uncheck the Word Wrap checkbox in the
edit page of the configuration dialog.To set the maximum line width (maximum characters per line), use the
Wrap Words At
option in the edit page of the configuration
dialog.If enabled,
it has the following effects:
While typing, the editor will automatically insert a hard line break after
the last whitespace character at a position before the maximum line width is reached.While loading a document, the editor will wrap the text in a similar way, so that
no lines are longer than the maximum line width, if they contain any whitespace allowing that.There is currently no way to set word wrap for document types, or even to enable or disable
the feature on document level. This will be fixed in a future version of &kate;Using automatic indenting&kate;s editor component supports a variation of autoindenting modes,
designed for different text formats. You can pick from the available modes using
the ToolsIndentation
menu. The autoindent modules also provides a function
ToolsAlign
which will recalculate the indentation of the selected or current line. Thus,
you may reindent your entire document by selecting all the text and activating
that action.All the indent modes use the indentation related settings in the active
document.You can set all sorts of configuration variables, including
those related to indentation using Document
Variables and File
types.Available Autoindent ModesNoneSelecting this mode turns automatic indenting off entirely.NormalThis indenter simply keeps the indentation similar to the
previous line with any content other than whitespace. You can combine this
with using the indent and unindent actions for indenting to your own taste.
C StyleAn indenter for C and similar languages, such as
C++, C#, java, javascript and so on. This indenter will not work with scripting
languages such as Perl or PHP.SS C StyleAn alternative indenter for C and similar languages, with the
same constraints.Python StyleAn indenter specifically for the python scripting language.
XMLA very nice XML auto-indenter. However tempting, do not try to
use this with HTML other than XHTML, because it fails with the old style
HTML tags (open tags like for example <br>)Variable IndenterThe variable indenter is experimental, and may change behavior or
disappear in future versions.
The variable indenter is special in that it can be configured using variables in
the document (or in a filetype configuration). The followwing variables are
read:
var-indent-indent-afterA regular expression which will cause a line to
be indented by one unit, if the first non-whitespace-only line above matches.
var-indent-indent: A regular expression, which will cause a matching line
to be indented by one unit.var-indent-unindentA regular expression which will cause the line to be
unindented by one unit if matching.var-indent-triggercharsA list of characters that should cause the
indention to be recalculated immediately when typed.var-indent-handle-couplesA list of parenthese sets to handle. Any combination
of 'parens' 'braces' and 'brackets'. Each set type is handled
the following way: If there are unmatched opening instances on the above line,
one indent unit is added, if there are unmatched closing instances on the
current line, one indent unit is removed.var-indent-couple-attributeWhen looking for unmatched couple openings/closings,
only characters with this attribute are considered. The value must be the
attribute name from the syntax xml file, for example "Symbol". If it's not
specified, attribute 0 is used (usually 'Normal Text').