If so, that may apply only to KDE 4. In XFCE, I can run Kwrite-trinity, but only if I sudo it from a terminal. I think it is an issue specific to Trinity, because ever since I switched to Trinity, I've had problems with running things from the desktop that the old KDE (or another desktop) would run from the desktop. For instance, in Trinity I can't run Synaptic from the desktop: Trinity doesn't visibly respond to it, even to request the password. I can run it from a terminal, but only if I borrow root's credentials using sux. This is one of several reasons I'm giving up Trinity and have changed my high opinion of it.

Trinity is basically a fork of KDE 3 and there shouldn't be any problem to run KDE 3 apps in other desktop environments. I would try to start the applications from the command-line and study the output to see what actually is going on.
Other than that, I would recommend to report the bugs you find to the developers, so that they can fix them.

emacs can do this several ways, ie
C-u M-! date <ret>

This runs the "date" command and inserts the output into the document at point.
Emacs can do pretty much anything, but the learning curve can be steep!
It should be available (installable) on any linux or windows system.

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I'd like to try that, but please explain the first part--where and how do you type that? I went to the section that looks like a terminal, with many messages about the program loading, and typed and hit return. Nothing happened.

Did you type that literally? You shouldn't.

I suspected C was Ctrl; but I couldn't have guessed M- ! was Alt-Shift+1.

If I know my computer history correctly the M stands for Meta.

These Meta keys ("modifier keys") where found on old keyboards (old Sun Keyboards if I'm not mistaken). The term and abbreviation are still around on (primarily) Unix related systems and Unix programs that where ported to Linux. Emacs and VI have been around for a long time (+/- 40 years).

Other OS's use different names ("Windows" key, "CMD" key (apple), FN keys on laptops etc), but shift, ctrl and (graphic)alt are also modifier keys.

Exactly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_key

hmmm...well, I suppose this is something. The result is that Emacs produces the datestamp/timestamp in the terminal instead of in the section displaying the text file. I have to copy and paste it. Between the keystrokes and the copying and pasting, the procedure becomes complex (if hardly difficult) enough that I might as well type the date and time myself.

I've never seen anything beat Windows Notepad for this--F5 and nothing else produces a date/timestamp in the file. (I think I tried using it with Wine once, but it wasn't worth the trouble.) I should learn scripting. Scripts seem to be able to do almost everything, so I expect I could write a script that does what I want in one key.

Tobi, for some reason, I'm not having much success running KDE Trinity programs in another desktop (XFCE). I enter "kwrite" in a terminal (because my KDE programs are not in the XFCE menus), and the terminal doesn't know the command.

If the terminal doesn't know the programs that means that they are not in your PATH environment variable. I would check that first, but I have no experience at all with Trinity, so I don't know it is installed on your distro.

Read the third post, from druuna, again, the link given there explains how to achieve exactly that with Vim.

In one of my first posts I mention vi, doesn't that do just that?

Put this in your vimrc file: Start up vim, press F5 in insert or command mode; Date is inserted at cursor.

Edit: TobiSGD beat me to it....

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I've resisted vi/vim because I'm not prepared to cope with an editor that doesn't even let me see what I'm typing; but I see that it has some GUI packages, so I'll look into it.

Where did you get that from? Every character I type in Insert-mode is displayed immediately on the screen, regardless if you use the command-line version (Vim) or the GUI version (GVim).

It was some years ago that I actually tried to use Vim, and I may have been doing something wrong.

Possible, the first time I tried it I was quite confused about the concept of a modal editor. Now that I am used to it I don't want to miss it and configure all my programs to have a somewhat similar functionality. And often, if I have to work on a machine without Vim installed I watch myself writing :wq into a random text editor and wondering why nothing happens.