202 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
202 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
# Plan — kate-custom
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## Goal
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Build a suite of Kate plugins that make the editor usable without menus, tuned
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to one specific operator profile:
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- mouse-heavy, with the mouse used at the caret rather than at the menubar
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- one-handed keyboard typing
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- no complex chords; single modifier at most
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- compact keyboard where F-keys/nav clusters sit behind a layer toggle
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- long Emacs history and some Sublime Text; `M-x` and type-to-filter palettes
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are familiar and welcome
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The spine of the suite is a single **action registry** reached through three
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interchangeable doors: `M-x` (keyboard), a radial caret menu (mouse), and the
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`:` command line (optional). Every feature registers its commands once and
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becomes reachable from all three. No action depends on an F-key or a chord.
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### Guiding principle: natural actions drive editing
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Each door suits a different kind of action, and placing an action in the wrong
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door breaks flow:
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- **Radial** is for actions that **complete in place** — cut, copy, paste,
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comment, case changes, join lines. The gesture starts and ends at the cursor;
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attention never leaves the text.
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- Actions that **open a panel demanding immediate focus elsewhere** (Find,
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Replace, goto) do **not** belong in the radial. Being flung to a panel right
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after a cursor gesture is jarring. These belong in the **command palette** or
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a **keybind**, where the context switch is expected. The radial keeps a
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"Command Palette…" slice as the escape hatch to them.
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## Why a custom matcher is the keystone
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Kate's built-in command bar cannot be fixed in place:
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- `KCommandBar` (KConfigWidgets) exposes only `setActions()`. There is no hook
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to replace or configure its matcher.
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- `KFuzzyMatcher` (KCoreAddons) is single-needle, strictly in-order
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subsequence, and not typo tolerant. KDE's own docs state `"gti"` will not
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match `"git"`. No orderless, no company-style completion.
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Therefore the palette is replaced, not extended, and the replacement is built on
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`FuzzyRanker`, a matcher with:
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- **orderless** tokenization (space-separated needles matched in any order)
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- **layered scoring**, strongest tier first:
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1. exact
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2. substring
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3. word-boundary initials (`rs` -> **R**ename **S**ymbol)
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4. in-order subsequence
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5. bounded typo via a single adjacent transposition (`gti` -> `git`;
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deliberately narrow to avoid false positives like `ren` -> "Open File")
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- **merged highlight ranges** for the UI
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- AND semantics across needles, case-folded, shorter-candidate preference
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## Milestones
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### M1 — FuzzyRanker (keystone) — DONE
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- Repo scaffold: top-level CMake (KF6/Qt6/ECM), `src/`, `src/fuzzy/`.
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- `src/fuzzy/fuzzyranker.{h,cpp}`: tokenize + layered scoring + ranges.
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- `src/fuzzy/test_fuzzyranker.cpp`: QTest suite, 14 cases, all green,
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including `gti -> git` and `ren sym -> Rename Symbol`.
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### M2 — Palette widget (replaces KCommandBar) — DONE
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- `PaletteModel` (`src/palette/palettemodel.{h,cpp}`): `QAbstractListModel`,
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re-ranks via `FuzzyRanker` on `setQuery`, exposes id/label/group/score and
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highlight ranges per row, frecency bonus. No widget dependency.
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- `PaletteWidget` (`src/palette/palettewidget.{h,cpp}`): frameless popup, filter
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line + results list, live company-style updates, top hit preselected, custom
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delegate bolds matched ranges. Keyboard: Up/Down/PageUp/PageDown, Enter
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activates, Esc cancels — cursor stays in the filter line, no chords. Mouse:
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click a row to activate. Emits `activatedId(id)` / `cancelled()`.
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- `src/palette/test_palettemodel.cpp`: 10 QTest cases, all green (filtering,
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orderless, typo, best-first ordering, frecency tie-break, highlight ranges).
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### M3 — KTextEditor plugin + M-x + action registry — DONE
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- `src/plugin/ollieplugin.{h,cpp}` + `ollieplugin.json`: a loadable
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`KTextEditor::Plugin` (`olliepalette.so`) built with `kcoreaddons_add_plugin`.
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- `OllieView` (one per MainWindow) registers the **M-x** action, `Alt+X`, a
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single modifier with the keys adjacent on a compact layout; `ApplicationShortcut`
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context so it is always live.
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- On trigger it aggregates every enabled, visible `QAction` from the window's
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`guiFactory()->clients()` action collections, keyed by stable `objectName`,
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and feeds them to `PaletteWidget`. The action's current shortcut is shown in
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the group column. Accepting a row triggers the underlying `QAction`.
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- Installs to `kf6/ktexteditor`; metadata verified valid via `KPluginMetaData`.
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- Not yet wired: frecency (the model supports a bonus, but the plugin currently
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passes 0 for every action — usage tracking is deferred).
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- Duplicate handling: actions are deduplicated only by pointer identity (the
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exact same action object reachable through several GUI clients is listed
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once — functionally lossless). Distinct actions are never dropped. When two
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distinct actions would render with the same label, the label is enriched
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through a fallback chain until every visible row is unique: component name →
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objectName → shortcut → numeric suffix. Each entry also gets a unique id so
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activation always triggers the intended action.
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### M4 — Radial caret menu (mouse door) — DONE (first increment)
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- `src/radial/radialmodel.{h,cpp}`: pure tree + geometry. Multi-level
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(branch/leaf) `RadialNode` tree, angle hit-testing (0 = up, clockwise), inner
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dead zone, far-flick snaps by angle, descend/ascend navigation. 14 tests.
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- `src/radial/radialmenu.{h,cpp}`: frameless translucent `QWidget`; paints the
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current ring (wedges, labels, branch ▸, central "back" hub), highlights the
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slice under the pointer. Two interaction modes from one widget: a **drag
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gesture** (opened with a button held — drag out and release to select; a
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release that never left the dead zone switches to click mode and keeps the
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menu open) and a **discrete click mode** (click a slice to select, click
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outside the ring to cancel). Esc ascends/cancels. Opens centred on the given
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point without moving the caret.
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- `src/radial/radialconfig.{h,cpp}`: JSON → radial tree parser (+ built-in
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default) so multiple radials can be bound to different triggers. 8 tests.
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- Wired into the plugin: `OllieView::setupRadials()` registers a key trigger
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(default **Alt+R**) and a **mouse-button gesture** (default **right mouse
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button**) per configured radial. Because the opening RMB press leaves an
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implicit grab on the editor view, the whole gesture (hover + release) is
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driven from the plugin's application event filter in global coordinates
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(`driveHoverGlobal`/`driveReleaseGlobal`), not from a popup mouse grab — this
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fixes stale hover and wrong-slice selection. The press and the following
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`ContextMenu` are consumed, so the context menu is suppressed and the caret
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does not move. Key-triggered radials pop at the caret
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(`View::cursorPositionCoordinates()`) and use the widget's own click handling.
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- A slice may reference any Kate action by objectName, resolved via
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`findActionByName`; the special `ollie_command_palette` slice opens the palette.
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- Honours the agreed model: radials are triggerable by keys (weapon-wheel style)
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and by mouse buttons/gestures; the config carries both a key `trigger` and a
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mouse `button` per radial.
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- Not yet done: free-form stroke gestures (only button-press gesture so far);
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user-file config loading (built-in default only); frecency.
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### Mouse chording (Acme-style) — DONE
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- Left-button chords (button 1 held while selecting is the anchor):
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**left + middle = Cut**, **left + right = Paste**. Both use `edit_cut` /
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`edit_paste` → the **standard KDE clipboard** (Klipper-backed), not the X11
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primary selection.
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- The right-button paste chord is free of conflict because the radial gesture is
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already suppressed while the left button is held: right alone = radial, right
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while left-held = paste.
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- Cut/Copy/Paste were removed from the radial once the chords covered them —
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the radial should not duplicate what a more in-flow gesture already does.
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- **Middle-click primary paste is suppressed** inside the editor — the middle
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button is consumed on both press and release (the paste fires on release, so
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swallowing only the press leaked it). Paste in the editor is the KDE-clipboard
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paste (`Ctrl+V`, palette, or the left+right chord).
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### Bracket-pair double-click selection — DONE
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- Double-clicking next to a bracket (`()[]{}`) selects the text strictly between
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the matching pair, **multi-line aware** and nesting-aware. Adjacency is checked
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on both sides of the click; openers select forward, closers select backward.
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- Implemented in the event filter via `selectBracketPairAt`: maps the click to a
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document cursor (`coordinatesToCursor`), reads neighbouring characters
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(`characterAt`), scans with depth counting across line ends, and sets the
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selection. When no bracket is adjacent it falls through to Kate's default
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double-click (word select).
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- A left double-click leaves the button held, so it also arms the chord anchor:
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the user can go straight from a double-click (bracket- or word-select) into a
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left+middle / left+right chord without releasing.
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### Acme line-editing keys — DONE
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- Keys bound (overriding Kate/KDE defaults, `ApplicationShortcut`):
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**C-a** beginning of line, **C-e** end of line, **C-h** erase char back,
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**C-u** erase to line start, **C-w** erase word back. Semantics ported from
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plan9port acme `text.c` (`^A`/`^U` stop at the line's newline; `^W` skips
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non-alphanumerics then eats the alphanumeric run; isalnum excludes `_`).
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- Implemented directly against the View/Document API (`cursorPosition`,
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`setCursorPosition`, `removeText`, `characterAt`, `lineLength`).
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- Bound via the application **event filter**, not QActions: QActions for
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`Ctrl+A/W/…` collide with Kate's own (Select All, Close) and Qt reports
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ambiguous shortcuts. Instead the filter accepts the `ShortcutOverride` for
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these combos (so Kate's shortcut never fires) and acts on the `KeyPress`,
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consuming it — no registered shortcut, so no ambiguity, no per-view sweeping.
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### M5 — Command vocabulary + project model + switchers — IN PROGRESS
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- `:`-verb pack — DONE. `src/commands/`: `texttransforms.{h,cpp}` (pure,
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unit-tested: sort/rsort, case upper|lower|title|snake|camel|kebab, base64
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enc/dec, rot13, uuid) + `olliecommands.{h,cpp}` (a `KTextEditor::Command`
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registering `sort`, `rsort`, `case`, `b64enc`, `b64dec`, `rot13`, `uuid`,
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`pipe`). Verbs transform the selection in place (or the whole document when
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nothing is selected); `pipe <shell>` runs `sh -c <shell>` with the selection
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on stdin and replaces it with stdout. 15 transform tests. The command object
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is created once by `OlliePlugin` (auto-registers globally).
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- Reachable from Kate's command line today; surfacing the verbs in the M-x
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palette (they are `Command`s, not `QAction`s) is a follow-up.
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- Project = directory ("open folder == open project"): TODO.
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- Fuzzy file / symbol switchers scoped to the folder: TODO.
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## Build and test
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```sh
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cmake -B build -S .
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cmake --build build
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ctest --test-dir build
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# or directly:
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QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen ./build/bin/test_fuzzyranker
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```
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## Environment facts (verified)
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- Kate 25.12.3, KDE Frameworks 6, Qt 6.10, cmake 4.2.3, g++, extra-cmake-modules.
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- KTextEditor + KCoreAddons + KConfigWidgets + KXmlGui + KRunner dev headers present.
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- No Python/Pâté binding installed; C++ is the only first-class plugin path.
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