Thanks. That and megane-kun’s solutions work, now that I know about the backslash key.

BTW, IDK about Kcalc 22, but Kcalc 23 rocks because they added history to it. If you type Ctrl+h, it opens a panel that shows all the past results since the last AC. That’s why I’m using the flatpak to get it. It makes the calculator much easier to use and when I get ridiculous results, it shows me what I actually typed instead of what I meant to type.

I’ve got it working, but I have to use it a while to see if it’s stable.

Sometimes asking a question makes you think of an answer.

I think I have a good workaround for now.

I’m writing an AutoKey script to do it using a Python regex. The added benefit of doing it this way is that it will work almost anywhere, not just in Kate.

It’s an active part of the splash screen. I don’t want to get rid of it. Since it only lasts a short time - much less than the whole splash screen, I was wondering if something particular was being done while it is displayed.

I have occasionally disabled splash screens and watched all the startup log entries fly by, but I don’t want to see that unless something is seriously broken and I need to figure out what.