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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.
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.
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.)