Version: (using KDE KDE 3.5.8) Installed from: SuSE RPMs The current policy is: allow editing, disallow saving. The wished policy is: disallow editing and saving. Why? It is more natural to not being able to edit non-editable file, user should only view it. If there is need of "alteration" of the file (impossible of course) user should save-as the file first and then edit the saved file. The wished behaviour is similar to OOffice (for example, the current one to MC -- and while I didn't edit any system files with Kate, I did it with MC and this was all the time annoying (edit -> oh, I cannot save -> save as -> root -> copy). So, if the file is read-only act in read-only mode as soon as possible.
This happen to the new kate version. Users should be informed that the file is in read-only mode.
This another issue, but you are right. Minor, related wish: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=154897 about informing user.
On the other side it would be great if kate (or whole kdelibs) would check file permissions when you save a file. If you are not able to overwrite the file, it should check, if the owner of the file is able to and then it would be nice to get a "run as user" dialog to enter username and password to save the file with the new rights.
I would rather opt for not having such feature -- I am rather afraid of mixing front-ends program with security (maybe it is paranoia :-) ). Besides, once introduced, it is potential risk of having bugs -- are you sure the privilege is used only for saving, or kept for further editing&writing, if yes, user can overwrite some important file by mistake too easily.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 105459 ***