# The &kwrite; Handbook

&TC.Hollingsworth; &TC.Hollingsworth.mail;
&Christoph.Cullmann; &Christoph.Cullmann.mail;
2014 &TC.Hollingsworth; &TC.Hollingsworth.mail;
&FDLNotice;
2021-09-02
KDE Gear 21.12

&kwrite; is a text editor by &kde; allowing you to edit one file at the time per window.

KDE KWrite text editor

## 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

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

&kwrite; Copyright 2001-2014 by the &kate; team.

Based on the original &kwrite;, which was Copyright 2000 by Jochen Wilhelmy digisnap@cs.tu-berlin.de

Contributions:

- &Christoph.Cullmann; &Christoph.Cullmann.mail;

- Michael Bartl michael.bartl1@chello.at

- Phlip phlip_cpp@my-deja.com

- &Anders.Lund; &Anders.Lund.mail;

- Matt Newell newellm@proaxis.com

- &Joseph.Wenninger; &Joseph.Wenninger.mail;

- Jochen Wilhelmy digisnap@cs.tu-berlin.de

- &Michael.Koch; &Michael.Koch.mail;

- &Christian.Gebauer; &Christian.Gebauer.mail;

- &Simon.Hausmann; &Simon.Hausmann.mail;

- Glen Parker glenebob@nwlink.com

- Scott Manson sdmanson@altel.net

- &John.Firebaugh; &John.Firebaugh.mail;

&underFDL; &underGPL;