Kate and QTTabBar, making ODF editing AWESOME in Windows

[Zero Angel]

Pictured here is my favorite windows text editor as well as the windows file browser extension QTTabBar running.

Said editor is actually called 'Kate' and it's actually a linux editor that's been ported over to Windows. I've tried Notepad++ and have discovered that it's very inelegant for what I do. Kate, however, supports Syntax Highlighting, project/session management, a *fast* find-in-files feature (faster than N++'s), split panes, and a sane 'open documents' view (much saner than tabs which become cumbersome for a large project).

The other thing pictured on my screen is Windows explorer running an addon called 'QTTabBar' which brings *tabbed* file browser viewing to Windows. I don't get why this was never implemented in Windows explorer as an enableable feature and while it's slightly less elegant than the tabbed browsing built into most linux file browsers it still does an admirable job. (also am running a windows addon called 'FileBox Extender' which adds the 'always on top' and 'shade' window controls)

That said, if you are interested in getting these programs you can find them at these locations:

Kate (part of the KDE for windows project)
http://windows.kde.org/

When you run the installer, it will give you an option to install several different components from the KDE desktop environment. I would recommend you install 'kate' from the kdesdk package sections as well as the settings package. The other programs are completely optional and you can install them later if you want to try them.

QTTabBar
http://qttabbar.sourceforge.net/

This one is nice. I personally disable the extra 'controls' because I feel they add a lot of 'noise' to the user interface. Tabs are the main feature, not all that other crud.

Filebox Extender
http://www.hyperionics.com/files/index.asp

This adds the 'shade' and 'always on top' controls as well as several other features. It's kind of bloated with the enabled features and many of them arent useful so I would advise you disable the ones you don't want and strip it down to the basics of what you believe would be useful. If you dont think that the shade and always on top controls are useful then skip this program.

Now to make the GUI better

Okay, so if you have Kate installed but it doesnt look like a native application. To fix this go into your Start Menu -> Applications -> KDE -> System Settings and then from there go into 'application appearance' -> Style. Set 'MS Windows Vista' or 'MS Windows XP' as your style so that KDE apps look native.

Now to get the nice color scheme that I use you'll need to open Kate and import the color profile and syntax coloration files that i've created.

http://zeroangel.overminddl1.com/misc_f ... kateschema

Rightclick -> 'Save as..' and save this to your downloads directory. Then go into Kate -> Menubar -> Settings -> Configure -> Color. And import the kateschema file you saved.

Now close out of Kate. Right-click on this link odf.xml and select 'save file as'. Save it to C:\Program Files\KDE\share\apps\katepart\syntax\ . Now open an ODF file using kate and you should have a similar setup to what i'm running.

Other stuff

Other options I advise are going into Kate's preferences (Settings -> Configure Kate...) and setting Line Breaks to be Windows/DOS by default (Open/Save), disable the 'backup on save' feature (Open/Save -> Advanced), as well as enable the Search/Replace plugin (Plugins) that allows you to do the 'find in files' type of search.

[Red Devil]

we've been doing the same thing for years now with the Notepad++ extensions and language filters for ODF and AIP files, but thanks anyways.

[Zero Angel]

Yuck. I tried to like N++ but I just couldnt. It's a good editor from a features standpoint, I just felt that all of the main N++ features had a better, more elegant implementation in Kate. Kate has ruined N++ for me, kind of like Photoshop has ruined GIMP or Starbucks has ruined Tim Hortons (canadian coffee chain) for me.

[Ded10c]

I tried N++ too, found it way too clunky. Notepad2 was my preferred choice.

[Nielk1]

NP++ is good for quick and dirty code editing, but not really for data-files like ODFs, even with a syntax colorizer.

[Red Devil]

i reckon it's amazing that i've been able to accomplish anything using it by the sounds of it...

[Zero Angel]

If its any consolation, some people still edit a lot of things in notepad, without syntax highlighting and things like that.

[Red Devil]

thanks, that's comforting.

[Nielk1]

RD, what's the deal? You read like you hate anything new and if people generally disagree with you you act like its a wonder you can breath (sarcastic quips).

[Zero Angel]

Doing some refinement on the color scheme. Going to try and push it upstream into a future release of Kate.