Kate — The Complete Guide: An Advanced Text and Code Editor for Scripts, Input Files and Data
Kate is an advanced open-source text editor from the KDE community for working on many documents at once, with tabs and split views. It suits editing scripts, analysis program input files and large data files — and it runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Kate
KDE
An advanced text and code editor — syntax highlighting for about 400 languages, split views, a built-in terminal and smart completion.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Syntax highlighting — for about 400 languages and formats.
- Multi-cursor editing and block selection — change a whole column in a data table.
- Project-wide search and replace — across all files in a folder.
- Smart completion through LSP — as in large development environments.
- Plugins — built-in terminal, debugger, database access and project building.
How it differs
Kate sits between a light editor and a full development environment. Block selection is especially handy for fixed-column input files, where one value in one column must change across hundreds of lines. Anyone working mainly in Python with notebooks will find more in VSCodium.
Related tools
For a lightweight Windows editor — Notepad++. For a code editor with a large extension registry — VSCodium. To compare file versions — KDiff3.
Notepad++
Don Ho
A light text and code editor for Windows — input files for analysis programs, data files and scripts.
Get it from the vendor
VSCodium
VSCodium project
The VS Code editor as a fully open build — Python, MATLAB, C, Markdown and more, without telemetry.
Get it from the vendor
Geany
Geany team
A light, fast code editor — scripts, G-code, input files for analysis programs and config files, with syntax highlighting.
Get it from the vendor
KDiff3
KDE
Compare and merge two or three files or folders — to reconcile changes to scripts, input files and configs.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Kate is a serious, free editor for anyone who works a lot with text files. Open source, including for commercial use.