My embedded terminal icon disappeared from Kate's bottom panel. So did the Search button, but I was able to find that in the icon list. How do I get my embedded terminal back? I can't find it in any of the menus, either.

in settings -> configure kate -> plugins ->terminal view

Oh hell... I'd just found it and was about to post a disregard message. Somehow all of my plugins got unchecked. Thanks for the reply, anyway.

I think whe kde restarts they seem to get unchecked

The plugin selection resetting is due to the way that Kate handles sessions. I just tried setting Kate to use open the last session on start and it would remember if I just opened Kate directly, but if I opened a file in Kate from a file browser it would reset to a blank session - reset window geometry and plugins.

It looks like what you have to do to get it to not reset to the (factory) default set of plugins is to manually set up the session (which in Kate's world is apparently the set of plugins, and maybe some of the other settings, and optionally the window geometry, but not the set of files, which IMO is counter-intuitive since all of the other text/code editors I've used refer to sessions as being the set of files/projects open) you want to remember, and save this as the new default (under the sessions menu).

Kate's sessions are far more powerful than just the set of files since depending on what project you are working on, you may wish to use different coding styles or languages, which require different settings to allow the best and most optimal workflow. ( I have Tab configured to add 4 spaces for instance, instead of the Tab character )

Granted, it can be worthwhile to some people to set up multiple Kate sessions with different coding styles, or what have you because you work with code from multiple environments; but I think a lot of people may find that they get in the way when they want to set up the editor with the plugins and settings they want and have the editor just remember those settings for any situation that they pull up the editor (or at least that is my preference, but I also use a single coding style for all of the code I work with). I think that this should be the default since that's what people opening kate for the first time will expect, and that those that want to make use of the multiple sessions can set it up to do so as well.

When creating new profiles, the settings of the Default profile will be copied to create the new profile I believe.