# Working With the &kate; MDI

## Overview

Window, View, Document, Frame, Editor... What are they all in the terminology of &kate;, and how do you get the most out of it? This chapter will explain all of that, and even more.

### The Main Window

The &kate; Main Window is a standard &tde; application window, with the addition of side bars containing tool views. It has a Menubar with all the common menus, and some more, and a toolbar providing access to commonly used commands.

The most important part of the window is the Editing Area, by default displaying a single text editor component, in which you can work with your documents.

The docking capabilities of the window is used for the tool windows:

- The Document List

- The Filesystem Browser

- The Sessions panel

- The Built in Terminal Emulator

And possibly other tool views, for example provided by plugins.

Tool views can be positioned in any sidebar. To move a tool, right click its sidebar button and select the destination sidebar from the Move to menu that appears.

A tool view can be marked as persistent. Selecting another tool view in the same sidebar will not hide any of the persistent tool views. To make a tool view persistent, right click its sidebar button and select the "Make persistent" entry from the Behavior menu that appears.

Each sidebar can contain more than one tool, so when a tool is persistant other tools can be shown simultaneously.

## The Editor area

&kate; is capable of having more than one document open at the same time, and also of splitting the editing area into any number of frames, similar to how for example &konqueror; or the popular emacs text editor works. This way you can view several documents at the same time, or more instances of the same document, handy for example if your document contains definitions in the top that you want to see often for reference. Or you could view a program source header in one frame, while editing the implementation file in another.

When a document is available in more than one editor, changes made in one editor will immediately be reflected in the others as well. This includes changing the text as well as selecting text. Search operations or cursor movement is only reflected in the current editor.

It is currently not possible to have more instances of the same document open in the sense that one instance will be edited while the other will not.

When splitting an editor into two frames, it is divided into two equally sized frames, both displaying the current document of that editor. The new frame will be at the bottom (in the case of a horizontal split) or at the right (for a vertical split) and will get the focus.

Refer to this section for instructions on how to split the current editor.

## The Document List

The Documents list displays a list of all documents currently open in &kate;. Modified files will have a small floppy disk icon on their left to indicate that state.

If two or more files with the same name (located in different folders) are open, the name of the second will be appended with (2) and so on. The tool-tip for the file will display its full name including the path, allowing you to choose the desired one.

To display a document in the currently active frame, click the document name in the list.

You can sort the list in a few different ways by rightclicking the list and selecting from the Sort By menu. The options are:

Opening Order

- Lists the documents in the order of opening.

Document Name

- Lists the documents alphabetically by their name.

URL

- Lists the documents alphabetically by URL.

Manual Placement

- Allows you to specify the order of the documents. You can change the order by dragging files up/down the list.

The document list will per default visualize your history by shading the entries for the most recent documents with a background color. If the document was edited, an extra color is blended in. The most recent document has the strongest color, so that you can easily find the documents you are working on. This feature can be disabled in The Document List Page of the configuration dialog.

The default location of the Document List in &kate; is to the left of the editing area.

## The Filesystem Browser

The Filesystem Browser is a folder viewer, allowing you to open files from a displayed folder in the current frame.

From top down, the Filesystem Browser consist of the following elements:

A Toolbar

- This contains standard navigations tool buttons (refer to this section for instructions on how to show/hide individual toolbar buttons):

  Home

- Pressing it will cause the folder view to `cd` to your home folder.

Up

- This will cause the folder view to `cd` to the immediate parent of the currently displayed folder if possible.

Back

- Causes the folder view to `cd` to the previously displayed folder in the history. This button is disabled if there is no previous item.

Forward

- Causes the folder view to `cd` to the next folder in the history. This button is disabled if there is no next folder.

Reload

- Causes the folder view to refresh the current view.

Short View

- The folder view will display only the file and folder names, without further details.

Detailed view

- The folder view will display additional file and folder details (for example size, permission, modification date).

Bookmarks menu

- A menu displaying your favourite folders for quick access to them.

Current document folder

- This button will cause the folder view to `cd` to the folder of the currently active document if possible. This button is disabled if the active document is a new unsaved file or the folder in which it resides can not be decided.

New folder...

- Pressing this button will create a new subfolder in the current folder.

Delete

- Pressing this button will delete the selected files/folders.

A &URL; entry

- Here you can type the path of a folder to browse. The &URL; entry maintains a list of previously typed paths. To choose one use the arrow button to the right of the entry. Refer to this section to change the number of URLs to remember.

  The &URL; entry has folder auto-completion capability. The completion method can be set by right clicking of the &URL; text and selecting the preferred method from the Text Completion menu.

A Folder View

- This is a standard &tde; folder view.

A Filter Entry

- The Filter entry allows you to enter a filter for the files displayed in the folder view. The filter patterns must be separated by white space. Example: `*.cpp *.h *.moc`

  To display all files, enter a single asterisk `*` or no filter at all.

  The filter entry saves the last 10 filters entered between sessions. To use one of them, press the arrow button on the right of the entry and select the desired filter string. Refer to this section to change the number of filter entries to remember.

The default location of the Filesystem Browser in &kate; is to the left of the editing area.

## The Sessions panel

The Sessions panel displays a list of all existing &kate; sessions and allows to manage them easily.

The Sessions panel consists of a toolbar at the top followed by the list of known sessions. The active session is marked by an icon on its right.

Please note that the active session and the currently selected session in the list may not be the same. The difference is important because most of the session commands work on the currently selected session and not on the active session.

The session toolbar

- It contains the following toolbar buttons:

  New

- Creates a new session and switch to it.

Save

- Save the current session.

Save as

- Save the selected session as a new session. A checkbox allows to choose whether to switch to the new session after saving or not.

Rename

- Rename the selected session.

Delete

- Delete the selected session. If the active session is deleted, a new session will be automatically created.

Reload

- Reload the active session from the last saved state.

Activate

- Close the active session and switch to the selected one. The same action can be performed by activating the selected session entry in the list using the mouse of the Enter key.

Toggle read only

- Allows to set whether the selected session is read only or not. A read only session will not change its properties and can't be saved, although documents can be edited and saved as normal. This option is great for creating template sessions.

Move up

- Move the selected session one position up in the list.

Move down

- Move the selected session one position down in the list.

The session list

- A list of all existing sessions.

## The Built in Terminal Emulator

The built in Terminal Emulator is a copy of the &tde; &konsole; terminal application, for your convenience. It is available from the Window Tool Views Show Terminal menu item or by pressing the Terminal button in the sidebar where the Terminal Emulator is located, and will receive focus when displayed.

Additionally, if the Sync terminal emulator with active document option is enabled, if possible it will `cd` into the directory of the current document when it is displayed or when another document is selected.

The default location of the Terminal Emulator in &kate; is at the bottom, below the editing area.

You can configure the Terminal Emulator using its &RMB; menu. For more information, see the &konsole; manual.

## The Find in Files Panel

The Find in Files panel in &kate; allows you to search for text in multiple files at once.

Results of the search will be displayed in the list at the bottom of the panel, while search errors will be displayed in a separate dialog.

The panel offers the following options:

Pattern

- The text to look for. The interpretation of the string depends on some of the options described below.

Case sensitive

- If enabled, the search will be case sensitive.

Regular expression

- If checked, the search string will be interpreted as a regular expression.

  See Regular Expressions for more on these.

Template (edit field and dropbox)

- Here you can specify an additional context string to be used as a wrapper around the search pattern. Some default templates are available through the dropbox on the right of the template edit field.

Files

- The file name pattern used to select which files to search. It is possible to specify multiple patterns by separating them with commas (for example *.h, *.cpp).

Hide errors

- If checked, the dialog window showing the search errors will not be displayed at the end of the search.

Folder

- The folder to search for files.

Recursive

- If checked, the search will also recurse in the subfolders of the specified folder.

You can use the Find button to start the search and the Cancel button to interrupt a running search.

The Clear button can be used to clear the search list at the bottom of the panel.

The default location of the Find in Files panel in &kate; is at the bottom, below the editing area.

## External Tools

In the Tools menu you will find a submenu labeled External Tools. These tools invokes external applications with data related to the current document, for example its URL, directory, text or selection.

External tools are user defined, you can add, edit or remove tools using the External Tools configuration panel.