When comparing Synwrite vs Kate, the Slant community recommends Kate for most people. In the question“What are the best programming text editors?” Kate is ranked 7th while Synwrite is ranked 65th. 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
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Pros
Pro Clean interface
Synwrite has a clean and beautiful UI.
Pro Small size and portable
Synwrite's small size makes it very portable and usable even from a USB flash drive.
Pro Built-in FTP support
Built-in support for FTP allows the user to transfer and exchange files between different computers and accounts.
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.
Cons
Con Windows only
Synwrite is only available for Windows and it's not cross-platform.
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.