Bug 449116

Summary:	Alternative UI layouts for Kate
Product:	[Applications] kate	Reporter:	Ethan <ethan1472003>
Component:	general	Assignee:	KWrite Developers <kwrite-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	christoph, waqar.17a
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	21.12.1
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Arch Linux
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:	22.08.0
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Ethan 2022-01-25 05:52:38 UTC

I think that Kate should offer some customisability for its UI layout, as I find that the UI currently can be quite a handful. I reckon issues that I experience are probably quite common among Kate users, especially ones migrating from another editor like Visual Studio Code.

Notable issues with the current layout:
* The left side-bar displays text running vertically, which for me is unreadable in practice.
* Open file tabs stretch to fill the entire width of the editor, this is less compact and requires more mouse (and eye) movement to switch to other open files.

Personal concerns aside, I imagine other users have issues of their own, which I think would make it best for the Kate UI to be generally more customisable.

Comment 1 Waqar Ahmed 2022-01-25 07:11:19 UTC

> Open file tabs stretch to fill the entire width of the editor, this is less compact and requires more mouse (and eye) movement to switch to other open files.

You can already change this. Open "Configure Kate.." -> "Behaviour" -> unchec "Expand Tabs"

Comment 2 Waqar Ahmed 2022-05-20 15:32:27 UTC

> * The left side-bar displays text running vertically, which for me is unreadable in practice.

In practice, you shouldn't need to read the text on it very often. Maybe once or twice and then you know what is what just by their position on the sidebars.

Don't have any ideas to fix this. A thick sidebar like vscode is one solution, but it wastes a lot of space so that is unlikely to happen

Comment 3 Christoph Cullmann 2022-06-18 18:55:38 UTC

https://invent.kde.org/utilities/kate/-/merge_requests/763

Comment 4 Ethan 2022-06-19 04:53:26 UTC

(In reply to Waqar Ahmed from comment #2)
> > * The left side-bar displays text running vertically, which for me is unreadable in practice.
> 
> In practice, you shouldn't need to read the text on it very often. Maybe
> once or twice and then you know what is what just by their position on the
> sidebars.
> 
> Don't have any ideas to fix this. A thick sidebar like vscode is one
> solution, but it wastes a lot of space so that is unlikely to happen

Regardless, I still find it an issue. Would it really hurt to just have it as an option?

Comment 5 Ethan 2022-06-19 04:55:12 UTC

(In reply to Christoph Cullmann from comment #3)
> https://invent.kde.org/utilities/kate/-/merge_requests/763

Thanks for putting the work into implementing this! When/if this gets merged, I'm going to put in an effort to switch to Kate from VSCodium.

Comment 6 Christoph Cullmann 2022-06-19 08:29:56 UTC

Merged.