Will they ever fix the issue in Kate with file swap syncing?
 

In Kate every time you press a key it also writes to a swap file. This is very problematic on network drives as any bit of latency translates to lag in the typing. There is an option in Kate to disable this, but that checkbox does not actually do anything.

Why is this, and is there any plans to fix that? Is Kate even still under development? I hope so as I have been unable to find an editor that compares as far as usability and features go (except for this issue). It is very noticeable if I'm working off a network drive and an IO intensive task is also in process on that same raid array. Using it over VPN is also not doable.

I switched away from it years ago because of this issue, and when I did an install of Mint KDE I was hoping this issue would be resolved but it's not.

If you want to reproduce this issue just open a file on a high latency storage device and hold down a key. Working locally is not an option, the whole point of my multi thousand dollar server infrastructure is so I don't have to store anything locally. It's all redundant, backed up, etc on the server farm.

It seems you're probably missing some details about your problem. The given description is not clear enough to know your problem - there are many significant variations of it that are possible, by your description.

I have edited, for several years, any kind of files in remote networks/disks/machines, with very high latencies and low bandwidth or both, and I never had such problem. I could use any program or editor I wanted - and I did so.

The KDE you're running is *installed* on the local machine? Or are you running some sort of thin client, since you mention to have an expensive and "complete" server? Why do you use KDE? Have you tried other alternatives?

Try this: open the terminal (CTRL+ALT+F2, for example) and edit this file with the command "pico" or "evim" or any other editor your system has installed (these two should be present on a Mint, though).

Tell us which commands you did in every step, including logging in (or steps that were done by the system, since it may access networkd files in several different ways).

The OS and Kate is installed locally but the files I'm editing are not local and shared via NFS. If I open a packet sniffer and hold down a key in kate I will see it is generating tons of NFS traffic, because for each character entered it sends data to a .kate-swp file. Is there a way to disable this? There is a check box called "Disable swap files syncing" to disable it but it does not work. In much earlier versions it used to. I don't want to use a command line editor for coding.

I don't use and I don't like KDE. I have used and have seen hundreds of users using Gnome, MATE (and other window managers) in Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Slackware and a few other distros, always doing NFS file editing (and much more than text editing). I have not seen a single complaint like yours now.

With a high certainty I assume the network traffic you see is for the key strokes being sent to KDE and Kate (and not for its swap file, as you said; there is an option to disable its use, which I believe should work).

If you're using NFS, your files should me mounted in some directory. For example, a text file should have an absolute path similar to:

/mount/DISK_A_PART_C/documents/meeting-conclusions.txt

Please try editing this document with the text terminal and pico editor (it's really easy to use, if you haven't tried it before). You probably won't have any network traffic beyound: the download of file's data, when you open it; the upload of file's data only in the moment(s) you save it.

This could also be a bug in Kate, or in KDE, or in your distro (in this order to search). I think the chance for such problem is lower than the other things I have said to you until now. But, if you think it is a bug you can try to submit a bug.

Many distributions have places where (even newbie) users can report bugs or problems.

I've seen this behaviour in all distros that I've tried. Out of all desktops I prefer KDE, it seems to be the most featured. Lot of stuff is more intuitive like searching for files, or taking screenshots, all little things but it all adds up. So I'm not switching.

I also like the functionality of Kate except for this issue, so I'm not switching. You can't even compare vim to a GUI editor. When coding a large application and you want to be able to have 20+ tabs opened and quickly switch between and do text manipulations like copy and paste and select you need a true GUI text editor, I don't care how 1337 using vim is, it's not not productive for large scale text editing. It's fine for editing the apache config file or DNS zones or making a minor change on live code or other basic edits directly on a server through SSH but does not replace a proper desktop editor.

I've tried plenty of editors but they all fell short of my needs. Though I just found through a more intensive google search that when it worked, that was actually considered a bug. Now they "fixed" it but it made this problem:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=309751

@Red Squirrel - I'm with you on KDE and Kate although I have had a lot of problems upgrading to Plasma5.

Could this be your fix? https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=349893

Don't use this tone
 

Your arguments about Kate, compared with any other editor, including Vim, simply are not true at all, not even close. They are in fact absolutely wrong, when you compare your problems, your descriptions and your needs with the factory behaviour of most other existing text editors, in any operating system with a graphical interface.

But your tone of speech is simply sickening.

What are you rambling on about?

Hmm that does indeed seem like the issue I'm having. They are marking it as fixed though, so not sure. Distros tend to be behind with what the latest version of programs are though so maybe the fix did not make it in yet. My version is 4.14.2. So I'll have to wait and hope that's the case and that it eventually gets pushed to my distro.

Update : This is fixed in version 16
And are two new settings: how often to sync, so if you do want a backup but you don't want every keystroke clogging your network, you can just update every x seconds; and sync to a different folder, so if you're working on a remote file you can keep your backup local.

That's great to hear! Those features should help a lot. Syncing to another folder is a nice option too, can have it go to a local disk.

Now in a few years from now maybe it will finally trickle down to distro main packages. :P