When comparing Kate vs Mark Text, the Slant community recommends Kate for most people. In the question“What are the best note taking apps for UNIX-like systems?” Kate is ranked 21st while Mark Text is ranked 27th. The most important reason people chose Kate is:
Has a terminal that can sync to the location of your document, letting you compile or run your program quickly or run quick commands, all without leaving the editor.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Integrated terminal
Has a terminal that can sync to the location of your document, letting you compile or run your program quickly or run quick commands, all without leaving the editor.
Pro Project mode
Kate allows you to make projects to simplify the organisation of your code. This brings in additional organization of an IDE without the overhead.
Pro Fast and minimaistic
Kate is pretty fast and lightweight. This helps it with it's start up speed.
Pro Syntax highlighting
Kate supports syntax highlighting for over 180 languages, from Assembler to Zsh.
Pro Edit over FTP, SSH, or other protocols
Kate uses KDE's input and output libraries to read and write files, allowing seamless integration with FTP, SMB, SFTP, and many other protocols.
Pro Thriving plugin ecosystem
Lots of plugins allow Kate to expand or shrink based on your needs. It includes GDB integration, XML completion, and symbol viewing to speed up programming.
Pro By far one of the best and lightest text editors.
Notepads alternative (for the Windows users).
Pro Vi entry mode
Kate has a vi entry mode.
Pro Open Source
Pro WYSIWYG or TEXT visualisation
Pro Has RTL language support
Can be used with languages such as Hebrew and Arabic.
Pro Very light : 103 Mb only
Cons
Con Hard to install on Windows or OS X
Kate can be a little hard to install and configure, especially for beginners.
On Linux or BSD, it can be easily installed from your distribution's repositories.
Con Not lightweight
On Windows 10 the installed size was 259 Mb, no surprise as this is an Electron based app.
Con Not a WYSIWYG editor, no formated preview
There is only plain text editing.
Con Limited block selections
