[Hampshire] GUI editor as root in Etch running KDE

Let's get the flame wars out of the way first - yes, I know that many of you
prefer Gnome, and yes I know that Ubuntu is the solution to all ills, but
they are not the solution to what I want to do because I actually do want to
go to Dublin from here.

How can I get a gui text editor running as root in Etch? Or is it simply
impossible and I have got to screw my courage to the sticking point and use
vi or vim? I would greet that solution with considerably less than
overwhelming enthusiasm.

I tried to do what I usually do and run the editor from the command line in a
root session, but could not. Both Kwrite and Gedit refused to run and
returned the same error: basically, both complained that xserver would not
let them in. So I logged out and tried to login again as root, but was told
that I could not login as root. I did not bother to try any other gui editor
because it seemed likely that they will all return the same error message.

So is the lesson I ought to be learning from this that I can't run GUI apps as
root in Etch?

TIA
Lisi