8 ms·

Can someone explain to me why one would use a GUI text editor like Kate above emacs/vim, apart from the looks? I've never used Kate seriously, but I'm curious

Can someone explain to me why one would use a GUI text editor like Kate above emacs/vim, apart from the looks? I've never used Kate seriously, but I'm curious about what benefits it provides...

the__alchemist 6y ago
You can navigate documents, and change where you're editing using a mouse.
- mfontani 6y ago
  On Vim, ":set mouse" enables the use of the rodent inside the application. See ":help mouse" for more information. If it's set to "n" (for "normal mode") or "a" (for "all modes"), it pretty much does what you're mentioning: one can instantly move the cursor to a given spot; use the scroll wheel to scroll the document, and (via netrw or any other file explorer or side-bar plugin) double-click to open a different file.
  - spijdar 6y ago
    As someone who primarily uses vim, I've never been able to use its mouse mode. There's something that feels off about it -- when selecting text with the mouse, it feels very imprecise somehow. If someone wanted good mouse support, I'm not sure it'd cut it. I prefer keyboard selection myself, but there are times mouse selection is faster, and I usually use not-vim for that.
  - hollerith 6y ago
    If you select text with the mouse, then press delete, does the selected extent of text get deleted from the buffer (i.e., the in-memory copy of the file)?
usr1106 6y ago
I would expect an IDE you have completion built in. In Emacs you need to configure LSP, which is a non-trivial task. I have no idea how Kate rates in that aspect, have never used it. Suprised to hear that it's still alive (but that doesn't mean negatively surprised).
- ognarb 6y ago
  Kate has LSP support since now more than one year: https://kate-editor.org/post/2019/2019-08-10-kate-lsp-more-languages-supported/ https://kate-editor.org/post/2019/2019-08-10-kate-lsp-more-l...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
vr46 6y ago
Same reason there's a thriving market of other editors really, horses for courses. People use best what they use most, sometimes they make a conscious decision about it and sometimes they just fall into it. I imagine that a lot of tools are just used without much questioning, and that's fine. The basic feature sets of text editors are pretty much the same. Write, delete, move, copy, paste, save, create. The main benefit is about choice, I keep a stack of text editors around just out of curiosity, because I like playing with software and editors and sometimes you find features you think are neat, and then go off to try and replicate them in your main editor or tool. Open source software is good at communicating ideas and text editors as a whole have really improved each other over the last three or four decades.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
Kate isn't a particularly good editor and it's scripting language is quite lacking. The reasons both Emacs and Vim have a Qt version as well instead of purely relying on a terminal protocol are obvious: - ability to have fonts of different sizes - ability to listen to more complicated keyboard shortcuts - cleaner ways of opening popups - ability to combine multiple fonts - support for more colors The downside of such a more complex protocol is that it's more involved to tunnel it over a network and doing attaching to X11 is also quite a bit more complicated than doing it to a terminal program.
- asjo 6y ago
  Emacs has a Qt version? Are you thinking of gtk, lucid/athena, or motif?
- jamesgeck0 6y ago
  Plus (sometimes but not always) lower input and display latency. MacVim is noticeably snappier than running Vim in iTerm2 or Terminal for me.
mongol 6y ago
As I recall, Kate is quite similar to Windows editors. It should be more familiar to users that have switched over to Linux from Windows, while still being quite feature rich. It is definitely a valuable editor in the Linux ecosystem
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Agreed. It's not too complicated. But it is one of the best basic editors. It's just a pleasure to use.
nicoburns 6y ago
Well for one it means you don't have to deal with modes. Mouse/scrolling support is usually a lot better in GUIs than TUIs too.
appleflaxen 6y ago
I think Kate is a modular editor that is used within other KDE programs, such as KDevelop (which is outstanding)
CJefferson 6y ago
Accessibility (I'm thinking blind / partially sighted) -- while a terminal is technically accessible, it is not a great experience. There are some blind people who do use, and love, vim/Emacs, bit GUI editors which integrate with their OSes accessibility features are usually a better experience. If you want an example, sometimes for errors vim prints something at the bottom, it's not clear to a screen reader if it should go read that, and why.
pydry 6y ago
It's a simple, lightweight text editor that doesn't require abstruse knowledge to use. Im not particularly overawed with emacs or vim features. I've seen some people give breathless demos explaining how cool it was that they could do certain things and not felt especially impressed, especially given the learning curve. They seemed to be optimizing for things I don't need to optimize for.
foxhop 6y ago
Before I learned vim all those years ago, it was really convenient to use Kate with fish (sftp) to "mount" and edit remote files. I would use this to edit HTML, CSS, and JS (and later PHP) on my FreeBSD servers which hosted my websites. Once I learned revision control (hg mercurial) I largely stopped modifying files directly on the remote host so I had less of a need for an sftp client built into my text editor.
berkes 6y ago
I used Kate fulltime up to the moment that I moved away from KDE due to the KDE3.0 fiasco. I took that moment to finally really learn Vim. Kate is lightweight yet versatile; despite what the screenshots might suggest. This is due to the extremely well-done integration in KDE: for example, the file browser is (was?) really just the file browser konqueror from KDE, Kate has to do hardly anything for that, just "wrap" it. Same for syntax highlighting, terminal, snippets, keybindings, windows chrome, and so on. Kate is really mostly a neat wrapper around a lot of existing KDE parts and libs (and that is an achievement, I don't mean that negatively). With Vim, I often say "Unix is my IDE", with Kate that could be translated to "the Desktop Environment is your IDE".
kiba 6y ago
They are good as Vim, Emacs, Atom, Notepad++, etc. I used a lot of text editors over the years. They are all good enough for programming work and are nigh indistinguishable from each other unless you go deep. Maybe unless it's Atom, but I think they had improved their performance over the years.
user-the-name 6y ago
Because it is no longer 1980, and the world has long since moved on.
kingaillas 6y ago
I don't use Kate, but lately I've been using VS code instead of vim. Well, I do minor/quick single file edits in vim but more and more I use VS code. I'm just faster doing things like cutting/pasting between multiple files, splitting screens, multi-line cursors, with a GUI text editor over vim. No, I'm not interested in putting even more time into time/effort/space-in-my-memory/etc into learning vim's keyboard combos to effectively do this stuff.
indymike 6y ago
1. There are a lot of users that are just not comfortable with working at a shell prompt. Graphical editors mirror the basic Mac or Windows workflow (open folder, double click on file, edit) and key bindings. 2. Syntax highlighting & formatting is better because of support for multiple fonts & better control of color. 3. Integration with other graphical apps. Kate is used as a component inside of many other KDE tools, so when you edit a file, the behavior is consistent and the key bindings are consistent. 4. Better integration with the desktop environment (in this case KDE). For example, I can open a file on a remote machine from the file open dialog. The file open dialog isis keychain aware, and can connect to any host that the desktop environment can (with KDE, that is almost anything that has file-like objects and remote protocol). You can do some editor be able to open a message from an IMAP server like I'm browsing files on localhost. Kate is more like a Notepad++ or TextWrangler on Mac. It's a solid editor, but not an Emacs, vim, or VSCode level.
- yakubin 6y ago
  > 1. There are a lot of users that are just not comfortable with working at a shell prompt. Graphical editors mirror the basic Mac or Windows workflow (open folder, double click on file, edit) and key bindings. Emacs has nothing to do with shell prompts. It's a GUI editor as well. Emacs philosophy goes against Unix. I e.g. never use the terminal mode. Otherwise, your points seem on-point.
maxxk 6y ago
For me the most important benefits of GUI text editor are: 1. Selection and system clipboard integration. 2. Ability to quickly scroll to look something without moving the cursor, then return where I was by pressing an arrow key (one of the largest pain points of emacs for me). 3. Proportional fonts with proper text rendering, especially for notes. I use 1 and 2 almost on a subconscious level, and it's hard for me to be productive in an editor which doesn't support these features. I'm sure, vim users can relate.
- yakubin 6y ago
  Emacs has a GUI, which supports 1 and 3 out-of-the-box. It's the only way I use Emacs. It's the main reason why I use Emacs and not Vim.
  - maxxk 6y ago
    Yeah, I used GUI emacs on and off for more than a decade, most recently — for a couple of months as a primary editor and email client. Emacs with gcc+pgtk patches feels great. Unfortunatley, due to scrolling and, most importantly, C-x/C-c vs cua-bindings (which was non-issue on OS X ⌘ but is an issue in X11 and Wayland) I never feel myself completely comfortable using emacs.
shrimp_emoji 6y ago
Try highlighting a block of text and copy pasting it to some other program. I already beat you to it cuz I used my mouse lol (and I don't have unwanted line numbers and garbo whitespace in the pasted text, to boot).
- lionkor 6y ago
  vim has a setting to copy "yanked" stuff into the clipboard. Selecting a block of text is arguably faster in vim than with the mouse, and then just hit "y" to copy. It think its comparable to Kate+Mouse

Can someone explain to me why one would use a GUI text editor like Kate above emacs/vim, apart from the looks? I've never used Kate seriously, but I'm curious about what benefits it provides...

the__alchemist 6y ago

You can navigate documents, and change where you're editing using a mouse.

mfontani 6y ago
On Vim, ":set mouse" enables the use of the rodent inside the application. See ":help mouse" for more information. If it's set to "n" (for "normal mode") or "a" (for "all modes"), it pretty much does what you're mentioning: one can instantly move the cursor to a given spot; use the scroll wheel to scroll the document, and (via netrw or any other file explorer or side-bar plugin) double-click to open a different file.
- spijdar 6y ago
  As someone who primarily uses vim, I've never been able to use its mouse mode. There's something that feels off about it -- when selecting text with the mouse, it feels very imprecise somehow. If someone wanted good mouse support, I'm not sure it'd cut it. I prefer keyboard selection myself, but there are times mouse selection is faster, and I usually use not-vim for that.
- hollerith 6y ago
  If you select text with the mouse, then press delete, does the selected extent of text get deleted from the buffer (i.e., the in-memory copy of the file)?

usr1106 6y ago

I would expect an IDE you have completion built in. In Emacs you need to configure LSP, which is a non-trivial task. I have no idea how Kate rates in that aspect, have never used it. Suprised to hear that it's still alive (but that doesn't mean negatively surprised).

ognarb 6y ago
Kate has LSP support since now more than one year: https://kate-editor.org/post/2019/2019-08-10-kate-lsp-more-languages-supported/ https://kate-editor.org/post/2019/2019-08-10-kate-lsp-more-l...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

vr46 6y ago

Same reason there's a thriving market of other editors really, horses for courses. People use best what they use most, sometimes they make a conscious decision about it and sometimes they just fall into it. I imagine that a lot of tools are just used without much questioning, and that's fine. The basic feature sets of text editors are pretty much the same. Write, delete, move, copy, paste, save, create. The main benefit is about choice, I keep a stack of text editors around just out of curiosity, because I like playing with software and editors and sometimes you find features you think are neat, and then go off to try and replicate them in your main editor or tool. Open source software is good at communicating ideas and text editors as a whole have really improved each other over the last three or four decades.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

Kate isn't a particularly good editor and it's scripting language is quite lacking. The reasons both Emacs and Vim have a Qt version as well instead of purely relying on a terminal protocol are obvious: - ability to have fonts of different sizes - ability to listen to more complicated keyboard shortcuts - cleaner ways of opening popups - ability to combine multiple fonts - support for more colors The downside of such a more complex protocol is that it's more involved to tunnel it over a network and doing attaching to X11 is also quite a bit more complicated than doing it to a terminal program.

asjo 6y ago
Emacs has a Qt version? Are you thinking of gtk, lucid/athena, or motif?
jamesgeck0 6y ago
Plus (sometimes but not always) lower input and display latency. MacVim is noticeably snappier than running Vim in iTerm2 or Terminal for me.

mongol 6y ago

As I recall, Kate is quite similar to Windows editors. It should be more familiar to users that have switched over to Linux from Windows, while still being quite feature rich. It is definitely a valuable editor in the Linux ecosystem

raverbashing 6y ago
Agreed. It's not too complicated. But it is one of the best basic editors. It's just a pleasure to use.

nicoburns 6y ago

Well for one it means you don't have to deal with modes. Mouse/scrolling support is usually a lot better in GUIs than TUIs too.

appleflaxen 6y ago

I think Kate is a modular editor that is used within other KDE programs, such as KDevelop (which is outstanding)

CJefferson 6y ago

Accessibility (I'm thinking blind / partially sighted) -- while a terminal is technically accessible, it is not a great experience. There are some blind people who do use, and love, vim/Emacs, bit GUI editors which integrate with their OSes accessibility features are usually a better experience. If you want an example, sometimes for errors vim prints something at the bottom, it's not clear to a screen reader if it should go read that, and why.

pydry 6y ago

It's a simple, lightweight text editor that doesn't require abstruse knowledge to use. Im not particularly overawed with emacs or vim features. I've seen some people give breathless demos explaining how cool it was that they could do certain things and not felt especially impressed, especially given the learning curve. They seemed to be optimizing for things I don't need to optimize for.

foxhop 6y ago

Before I learned vim all those years ago, it was really convenient to use Kate with fish (sftp) to "mount" and edit remote files. I would use this to edit HTML, CSS, and JS (and later PHP) on my FreeBSD servers which hosted my websites. Once I learned revision control (hg mercurial) I largely stopped modifying files directly on the remote host so I had less of a need for an sftp client built into my text editor.

berkes 6y ago

I used Kate fulltime up to the moment that I moved away from KDE due to the KDE3.0 fiasco. I took that moment to finally really learn Vim. Kate is lightweight yet versatile; despite what the screenshots might suggest. This is due to the extremely well-done integration in KDE: for example, the file browser is (was?) really just the file browser konqueror from KDE, Kate has to do hardly anything for that, just "wrap" it. Same for syntax highlighting, terminal, snippets, keybindings, windows chrome, and so on. Kate is really mostly a neat wrapper around a lot of existing KDE parts and libs (and that is an achievement, I don't mean that negatively). With Vim, I often say "Unix is my IDE", with Kate that could be translated to "the Desktop Environment is your IDE".

kiba 6y ago

They are good as Vim, Emacs, Atom, Notepad++, etc. I used a lot of text editors over the years. They are all good enough for programming work and are nigh indistinguishable from each other unless you go deep. Maybe unless it's Atom, but I think they had improved their performance over the years.

user-the-name 6y ago

Because it is no longer 1980, and the world has long since moved on.

kingaillas 6y ago

I don't use Kate, but lately I've been using VS code instead of vim. Well, I do minor/quick single file edits in vim but more and more I use VS code. I'm just faster doing things like cutting/pasting between multiple files, splitting screens, multi-line cursors, with a GUI text editor over vim. No, I'm not interested in putting even more time into time/effort/space-in-my-memory/etc into learning vim's keyboard combos to effectively do this stuff.

indymike 6y ago

1. There are a lot of users that are just not comfortable with working at a shell prompt. Graphical editors mirror the basic Mac or Windows workflow (open folder, double click on file, edit) and key bindings. 2. Syntax highlighting & formatting is better because of support for multiple fonts & better control of color. 3. Integration with other graphical apps. Kate is used as a component inside of many other KDE tools, so when you edit a file, the behavior is consistent and the key bindings are consistent. 4. Better integration with the desktop environment (in this case KDE). For example, I can open a file on a remote machine from the file open dialog. The file open dialog isis keychain aware, and can connect to any host that the desktop environment can (with KDE, that is almost anything that has file-like objects and remote protocol). You can do some editor be able to open a message from an IMAP server like I'm browsing files on localhost. Kate is more like a Notepad++ or TextWrangler on Mac. It's a solid editor, but not an Emacs, vim, or VSCode level.

yakubin 6y ago
> 1. There are a lot of users that are just not comfortable with working at a shell prompt. Graphical editors mirror the basic Mac or Windows workflow (open folder, double click on file, edit) and key bindings. Emacs has nothing to do with shell prompts. It's a GUI editor as well. Emacs philosophy goes against Unix. I e.g. never use the terminal mode. Otherwise, your points seem on-point.

maxxk 6y ago

For me the most important benefits of GUI text editor are: 1. Selection and system clipboard integration. 2. Ability to quickly scroll to look something without moving the cursor, then return where I was by pressing an arrow key (one of the largest pain points of emacs for me). 3. Proportional fonts with proper text rendering, especially for notes. I use 1 and 2 almost on a subconscious level, and it's hard for me to be productive in an editor which doesn't support these features. I'm sure, vim users can relate.

yakubin 6y ago
Emacs has a GUI, which supports 1 and 3 out-of-the-box. It's the only way I use Emacs. It's the main reason why I use Emacs and not Vim.
- maxxk 6y ago
  Yeah, I used GUI emacs on and off for more than a decade, most recently — for a couple of months as a primary editor and email client. Emacs with gcc+pgtk patches feels great. Unfortunatley, due to scrolling and, most importantly, C-x/C-c vs cua-bindings (which was non-issue on OS X ⌘ but is an issue in X11 and Wayland) I never feel myself completely comfortable using emacs.

shrimp_emoji 6y ago

Try highlighting a block of text and copy pasting it to some other program. I already beat you to it cuz I used my mouse lol (and I don't have unwanted line numbers and garbo whitespace in the pasted text, to boot).

lionkor 6y ago
vim has a setting to copy "yanked" stuff into the clipboard. Selecting a block of text is arguably faster in vim than with the mouse, and then just hit "y" to copy. It think its comparable to Kate+Mouse