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I like Kate (the editor, that is), but I can't figure out how to stop its auto-indenting.

In Settings > Indentation, I've turned off everything I could:

Indentation mode: None

Indentation with Spaces: Use spaces instead of tabs to indent;
Number of spaces: 0

Keep indent profile? No

Keep extra spaces? No

And yet, whenever I indent a paragraph with a couple of spaces, Kate moves the whole paragraph over. What am I missing? Thanks.

I've tried it; it doesn't make any difference. Whenever I indent the first line of an existing paragraph, or start a new paragraph with one or more spaces, Kate indents the whole paragraph with rows of distracting black X's. (Ick---what were the devs thinking?)

The KDE Handbook says:

Quoted

Using automatic indenting
Kate's editor component supports a variation of autoindenting modes, designed for different text formats. You can pick from the available modes using the Tools->Indentation menu...

The menu's set to "None", like my Configure > Indentation setting. No effect.

Quoted

[Handbook continues] The autoindent modules also provides a function Tools->Align which will recalculate the indentation of the selected or current line. Thus, you may reindent your entire document by selecting all the text and activating that action. All the indent modes use the indentation related settings in the active document.

Huh? What are "autoindent modules"?

The Tools menu does have an Align command, but it does nothing to the current line or to selected text. Baffling. Are we supposed to know what all this stuff means? I used Windows text editors for 10 years and never had to jump through these kinds of hoops.

Quoted

[Handbook continues] You can set all sorts of configuration variables, including those related to indentation using Document Variables and File types.

WTF?

I'd just use a different editor, but the others I've tried either:

_ Take much longer to start

_ Lack basic editing features (e.g. standard keyboard shortcuts) or impose weird ones on you

_ Require you to take a college programming course to make the most basic customizations

I just want a plain-text editor that starts quickly and doesn't force geeky features on me. Is that too much to ask? Anyone know of any like that?

Bram85: You're exactly right. KWrite is much simpler (with settings even I can understand!).

It's my fault for not looking more closely at KWrite when I started using Linux. I just assumed it had more features than Kate---but it's the other way around. (I guess "Kate" sounded like the simplest name!)

Anyway, I'm sorry I was ranting so much. No doubt I was just feeling stressed out by so many new things to learn. Linux is fabulous, though (but you knew that).

Cheers, Ander