I'm a writer who often (such as now) finds Kate handy for dashing off quick bits of text. As useful as I find Kate, generally, however, it surprisingly lacks a word-count facility. I say surprisingly not only because features such as word-wrap and spell-checking suggest Kate IS intended to be more than just a programmers' editor, but also because a google of the topic turns up requests for word-count functionality dating back to 2002 or earlier, multiple bug reports since at least 2003, and third-party external scripts (none of which I've been able to get to work) from as long ago as '04. And the Gnome counterpart, Gedit, has had wordcount since v0.5.3 in mid-1999.

Given all that, it seems apparent that the omission of word-count functionality is intentional; what is not so apparent is why. It is, for writers, as essential a tool as spell-checking. At the very least, one of the already available scripts could simply be included in a default installation. Better still would be a plug-in, if the developers want to keep it out of the main code branch.

Could a developer explain the rationale behind the omission?

--Nathanael