The KWrite Handbook

## The KWrite Handbook

T.C. Hollingsworth `<tchollingsworth@gmail.com>`

developer: Christoph Cullmann
Revision KDE Gear 21.12 (2021-09-02)

Copyright © 2014 T.C. Hollingsworth `<tchollingsworth@gmail.com>`

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

KWrite is a text editor by KDE allowing you to edit one file at the time per window.

## Introduction

KWrite is more than a text editor by KDE. It is meant to be a programmer's editor, and could be considered as at least a partial alternative to more powerful editors. It may be best used in conjunction with Konqueror or Dolphin for source file browsing for different languages. KWrite also works very well as a simple text editor. One of KWrite's main features is the colorized syntax, customized for many different programming languages such as: C/C++, Java™, Python, Perl, Bash, Modula 2, HTML, and Ada. KWrite has a single document interface (SDI) allowing you to edit one file at the time per window.

KWrite is a simple interface to the KatePart component also used by Kate, KDevelop, and other applications from KDE that require advanced text editing. Therefore, complete documentation for all the features of KWrite can be found in the KatePart Handbook.

Command Line Options
Command Line Options

## Command Line Options

Though KWrite may most often be started from the Plasma application starter, or a desktop icon, it can also be opened at the command line prompt of a terminal window. There are a few useful options that are available when doing this.

Many other applications that use KatePart offer similar command line options.

### Specify a File

By specifying the path and name of a particular file the user can have KWrite open (or create) that file immediately upon startup. This option might look something like the following:

    % kwrite
    /home/myhome/docs/myfile.txt

### Specify a file on the Internet

The above-mentioned method could even be used to open files on the Internet (if the user has an active connection at the time.) An example of this might look like the following:

    % kwrite
    ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/README

### Other Command Line Options

The following command line help options are available

`kwrite `--help``

  This lists the most basic options available at the command line.

`kwrite `--author``

  Lists KWrite's authors in the terminal window.

`kwrite `-v`, `--version``

  Lists version information for the application.

`kwrite `--license``

  Shows license information.

`kwrite `--desktopfile` `filename``

  The base file name of the desktop entry for this application.

  This is in particular useful for wrapper applications and applications having in general multiple desktop files. Thus each desktop file can have its own command line for the `Exec` entry.

`kwrite `-e`, `--encoding` `encoding``

  Causes KWrite to use the specified encoding for the document.

`kwrite `-l`, `--line` `line``

  Navigate to the specified line after opening the document.

`kwrite `-c`, `--column` `column``

  Navigate to the specified column after opening the document.

`kwrite `-i`, `--stdin``

  Causes KWrite to read the document content from STDIN. This is similar to the common option `-` used in many command line programs, and allows you to pipe command output into KWrite.

Credits and License
Credits and License

## Credits and License

KWrite Copyright 2001-2014 by the Kate team.

Based on the original KWrite, which was Copyright 2000 by Jochen Wilhelmy `(digisnap AT cs.tu-berlin.de)`

Contributions:

- Christoph Cullmann `(cullmann AT kde.org)`

- Michael Bartl `(michael.bartl1 AT chello.at)`

- Phlip `(phlip_cpp AT my-deja.com)`

- Anders Lund `(anders AT alweb.dk)`

- Matt Newell `(newellm AT proaxis.com)`

- Joseph Wenninger `(kde AT jowenn.at)`

- Jochen Wilhelmy `(digisnap AT cs.tu-berlin.de)`

- Michael Koch `(koch AT kde.org)`

- Christian Gebauer `(gebauer AT kde.org)`

- Simon Hausmann `(hausmann AT kde.org)`

- Glen Parker `(glenebob AT nwlink.com)`

- Scott Manson `(sdmanson AT altel.net)`

- John Firebaugh `(jfirebaugh AT kde.org)`

This documentation is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.