Enable Kate plugins by default?

Help
1

Hi, I’m wondering if it’s possible to set up certain plugins so that they are always active.

For example, if I want to use the color picker plugin all the time, right now I either have to turn it on for every single saved session and then re-save the session, or I have to manually go to configure kate > plugins and check the box for color picker every time I open the program, because Kate will not remember my plugin settings. It only remembers my plugin settings if they’re saved to a session, which is annoying.

Is there a way to make it so that the color picker plugin is always enabled by default, so I don’t have to do this?

2

Any suggestions are appreciated… there’s gotta be a way to do this right? It seems like such a basic feature, it’s insane to me that they’d leave this out.

3

I hate to keep bumping this, but every time I’ve tried to get answers from this forum for any question it’s felt like squeezing blood from a stone―all I’d like to know is if it’s possible. If it’s not possible, I’d like for someone to tell me that.

4

Are you sure about that? I just tested and the plugins are enabled even when I tell kate to start a new session each time.

What kde/kate version are you using? Which distro? Also can you try with a new user to see if it does the same?

5

Thanks for your response!

Yes, I’m certain, it resets every time I start a new Kate session. I’m using Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon, and Kate version 21.12.3

I tested on a new user account and it does seem to work on there as you said, which is a bit confusing. I have no idea why it wouldn’t work on my main user.

6

Well, this seem a rather old version and I have no idea what the issue might be :slight_smile:

Let’s try this, in the hope that it is applicable to version 21.12 (I’m in 24.02)

In the folder ~/.local/share/kate/ there should be a file named anonymous.katesession and the contents of that file should contain a section named [Kate Plugins] with a list of all kate plugins. Just find the color picker one, which I assume would be

katecolorpickerplugin=false

Try changing it to true, ie

katecolorpickerplugin=true

and see if that fixes the issue.

7

Looks like that worked, thank you for your help!

I’d update my Kate to a newer version, but both software manager and sudo apt-cache policy commands tell me I’m on the latest version for my distribution, so I’m not sure I can. But since it’s working now, I think it probably doesn’t matter. Thanks again.

8

slightly OT:
you could add both the official Kubuntu Backports and Kubuntu Backports Extra (as Linux Mint 21 is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS) PPAs to get slightly newer KDE Plasma/Gear/Frameworks.

Some people in the Kubuntu Forums Net have done this successfully with their Linux Mint 21 installations.

Afterwards you would have Plasma 5.27.10, Gear (Kate et al.) 22.04.3 and Frameworks 5.104.

As always I strongly recommend that you have prepared some way to revert your system to a previous state if something goes wrong, e.g.:

One can install ppa-purge before and use it to get rid of the Kubuntu Backports’ packages again.
Or use a Timeshift system backup.
Or use LVM/ext4 with snapshots or btrfs with snapshots as your file system.
Or use a Clonezilla volume backup.
Or …​​​​​

See:

and

1 Like