p = &p;
How Kate got X-rated
(Ok, not really.)
Kate’s maintainer, Christoph Cullmann, shared a funny story over a beer one of the first days here at GCDS.
In ye olden days, what is now Kate and Kwrite was one application called “KWrite – KDE’s Advanced Text Editor”. However, the author of Kwrite mysteriously disappeared. Christoph forked Kwrite and continued working on it and after some time it greatly surpassed Kwrite’s capabilities and was becoming more of a power tool. A name change was long overdue.
Being a good German, Christoph decided to name it after the philosopher Immanuel Kant, so in KDE 2.1 the editor “Kant” was born.
For some strange reason, probably easier to understand for native English speakers, it was renamed to “Kate” in KDE 2.2. And thus what still is KDE’s Advanced Text Editor was born.
| This entry was posted by Erlend on 8 July, 2009 at 11:37, and is filed under english, kate, kde. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 1 year ago
Good idea. The name “Kant” is commonly pronounced by Americans (well, if at all) in a way that sounds like “can’t” to British English speakers; British English speakers would pronounce it the same as “cant” which means insincere, hypocritical statements; the actual German pronunciation sounds more like an English swear word. So, Kate is a much better name.
Actually, if Kate was a German word it would be pronounced like “Carter”, so you could use “Get Kate” as a slogan. (Ever seen that film? Famous for a guy being thrown out of a multi-storey car park through someone’s windscreen.)
about 1 year ago
Brilliant story. Ha.
I love kate as an editor and always wondered where the name arose, as it isn’t as intuitive as most other applications, e.g. kwrite.
about 1 year ago
@Matt Smith: but Kate is a German word
A “Kate” is a small house (for living) on the countryside. In other places of Germany this is often called Kotten. The British word would be Cottage.
about 11 months ago
There is a german word “Kate”, but germans never say it.
Probably most germans even don’t know it (except those
who do crossword puzzles).