Bug 511795 - Cannot Ctrl+G go to text column
Summary: Cannot Ctrl+G go to text column
Status: REPORTED
Alias: None
Product: kate
Classification: Applications
Component: search (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: 25.04.3
Platform: Fedora RPMs Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: KWrite Developers
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2025-11-07 21:12 UTC by Christian Lampe
Modified: 2025-11-07 21:13 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

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Description Christian Lampe 2025-11-07 21:12:34 UTC
SUMMARY
With Ctrl+G I can enter a line number to teleport the text cursor to. Sometimes I need to, for script debugging purposes, jump to a specific character in a long line of JavaScript for example, where the debug console helpfully tells me not only the line but also what character an error occurred at. It seems like someone already thought of that feature some time ago, because the number input field stops accepting any input once you enter a colon, until you press backspace enough for that invisible colon to be gone. 

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Open a text file with multiple long lines
2. Press Ctrl+G
3. Enter a line number, followed by a colon and a column number. 

OBSERVED RESULT
Hitting enter jumps to the start of the line

EXPECTED RESULT
Hitting enter should jump to the entered <line>:<column> position in the open file

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.2
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.19.0
Qt Version: 6.10.0

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
I first asked about this functionality (which seems to be common in other plaintext editors) on Discuss (see <https://discuss.kde.org/t/go-to-character-in-kate/40834>) and tried to add this feature myself, but because of my limited C++ experience (of which none with any GUI programming) I had a hard time figuring out where in the codebase to even look, and didn't end up adding it in the one week of free time that I had and doubt I will manage to wrap my head around it now that my days are filled with school again (which includes other programming projects).   
But I estimate this shouldn't be too hard to implement for someone who knows their way around C++, Qt and KDE, since as it seems the backend already has everything needed for this.