Re: [opensuse] kde and the kate editor

Jonas Helgi Palsson wrote:
Hi

On Tuesday 08 January 2008 19:45:05 Wendell Nichols wrote:
Kate drives me nuts. Its a good editor but every time you right click
to edit a file in konqueror using kate it starts a new window. If I use
a command window and specify --use it will "reuse" an existing window if
one is started for the session I specify. However because kdeinit
starts it I cannot pass a parm through konqueror.
So I get 30 kate windows on my desktop when all I want is one. Ideally
I'd like kate to open the file I've chosen in the instance of kate which
is already open ON THAT DESKTOP.

Has anyone figured this out?
Sorry if this is an inappropriate forum... well not all that sorry....
wcn


Now the simple answer is (of course) DCOP!

But how to make it work was not so easy :-)

What you need to do is
1. Keep track of which virtual desktop you are on
2. Keep track of which Kate process is on which virtual desktop
3. Use DCOP to instruct (the correct) Kate to open the selected file.


Here is a way to do it (with some quick'n'ugly scripts):

First make a directory to keep some tempfiles

mkdir ~/.kate_pid

then we make 2 bash scripts, put them in your ~/bin/ or where ever you fancy.

1: start_kate.sh
--------------------<cut here>---------------------------
#!/bin/bash
# Get current virtual desktop
VIRT_DESKTOP=$(dcop kwin KWinInterface currentDesktop)
#Now we start kate with all the arguments that we recived
kate $@&
echo -n $! > ~/.kate_pid/kate_pid.$VIRT_DESKTOP
exit 0;
--------------------<cut here>---------------------------
2: kate_open_file.sh
--------------------<cut here>---------------------------
#!/bin/bash
# The encoding used, utf8 is the usual one
ENCODING=utf8
# We need to find out which virtual destop we are on
VIRT_DESKTOP=$(dcop kwin KWinInterface currentDesktop)
# We need to see if there is a pid file for that desktop
if [ -f ~/.kate_pid/kate_pid.$VIRT_DESKTOP ] ; then
#Yes there was, now we need to check if the kate process
#belonging to that pid is still alive
#First find the pid
KATE_PID=$(cat ~/.kate_pid/kate_pid.$VIRT_DESKTOP)
if [ $(dcop kate-$KATE_PID >/dev/null 2>&1; echo $?) -gt 0 ] ; then
#No it is not, so we start it
kate $@&
# and record the pid for reuse
echo -n $! > ~/.kate_pid/kate_pid.$VIRT_DESKTOP
else
# now some DCOP magic
dcop kate-$KATE_PID KateApplication openURL $1 $ENCODING
fi
else
#there was no kate_pid file so we start kate.
kate $@&
# and record the pid for reuse
echo -n $! > ~/.kate_pid/kate_pid.$VIRT_DESKTOP
fi
--------------------<cut here>---------------------------

Use the start_kate.sh wrapper to start Kate on a virtual desktop. (Not really
needed)

Then make a new action in Konqueror to open files, and have it run:
/the/path/to/the/script/kate_open_file.sh %U

That should do it :-)

Notice that there is no error checking at all in the scripts, so if you use
it, please make it better and post the result :-)

regards
Jonas

It looks like the source of the problem was this change in the code:

Revision 499764 - (view) (download) (as text) (annotate) - [select for
diffs]
Modified Wed Jan 18 16:49:04 2006 UTC (23 months, 3 weeks ago) by alund
File length: 10186 byte(s)
Diff to previous 498190

* Kate will export the PID of the instance in the environment variable
KATE_PID. You can use that to do some initialization in your ~/.bashrc
file for example, if you like to open files in kate from the built in
terminal:

# If we are running in a konsole in kate,
# $KATE_PID is the pid of that kate application instance.
if [ -n $KATE_PID ] ; then
# open files in this instance
alias kate="kate -u -p $KATE_PID"
# allow creating a new instance
alias kate_newinst="`which kate`"
fi

The discussion continues and recognizes the difficulty in getting the
old behavior back.

Revision 495447 - (view) (download) (as text) (annotate) - [select for
diffs]
Modified Sun Jan 8 09:02:09 2006 UTC (2 years ago) by alund
File length: 9921 byte(s)
Diff to previous 465343

Always follow the configuration option for chosing a session when none
is specified.
I commit this, since I can't see how else we can enable old style
behavior easily. The 'new' behavior can be achieved by keeping the
default configuration of starting a new session.
BUG: 119620


--
David C. Rankin, J.D., P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Relevant Pages

  • Re: [opensuse] kde and the kate editor
    ... to edit a file in konqueror using kate it starts a new window. ... So I get 30 kate windows on my desktop when all I want is one. ... Keep track of which Kate process is on which virtual desktop ... # We need to see if there is a pid file for that desktop ...
    (SuSE)
  • Re: [kde-linux] kate "Documents" tool view
    ... > How can I start Kate without having the "Documents" tool expanded? ... and shows all the open files being edited in ... have use settings from last session ticked in the relevant settings panel.) ...
    (KDE)