I don't understand your issues with Kate - it has been my friend all the
time and never let me down.
It supports sessions, code highlighting, file history and many more useful
features.
If I want to read a simple text file I use Kedit - thus in konqueror kedit
is first choice, but for scripting/code reading and making notes I prefer
kedit.

I write this, so that there is one voice for Kate. Not that someone has the
wrong impression of me or Kate.

> 
> That has been my solution to getting rid of kate. I liked gedit, but it
> scrambled the contents of a file one too many times so I'm using geany
> now.  A pretty face, less capable, but has yet to scramble a file just
> while changing one byte in it. Plugins are gradually appearing as coders
> scratch their own personal itches.

plugins in kate are not mandatory

> 
> I think my distaste for kate probably starts with its default font
> selections.  Ugly is being kind...

font is easy customizable. In fact I like the Monospace as it has fixed
width for each char, so that the position is also fixed.

regards