When comparing Syntaxic vs Kate, the Slant community recommends Kate for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source text editors for programming?” Kate is ranked 10th while Syntaxic is ranked 38th. 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 Cross-platform
Syntaxic is available on Windows, OSX, and Linux.
Pro Built-in Shell
Syntaxic has a built-in terminal emulator.
Pro Code completion
Syntaxic offers symbol completion.
Pro SSH editing
Syntaxic permits editing files through SSH and it also supports features such as sudo
, su
, and tunneling.
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 Lacks file preview
There's no file preview in Syntaxic when selecting a file in the file tree.
Con Can't load binary files
An error results when you try to load a binary file in Syntaxic.
Con Can't switch syntax highlighting on the fly
Con Non-intuitive controls.
For example, you can only move tabs inside of group, not to other groups, or to a new window by dragging and dropping.
Con Not free
Syntaxic needs a license code to work which costs $20 until version 1.0 hits, and once it does it will be $35.
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.