File Locking and Read Only Mode
Have you ever viewed the contents of a file that you had no intention of modifying and then accidentally changed and saved? It can happen to anyone, especially when editing a large number of files. TKE has an elegant way to avoid having this happen to you with a feature called file locking.
Locking a file causes the associated edit buffer to switch to read-only mode. You can still select, copy text and search within the file; however, it is impossible to modify the contents of the buffer. Let’s take a quick look to see how to lock (and unlock) a file within TKE.
You can lock a file via the UI in two different ways:
- Click on the tab in the tab bar containing the file to lock and then click on the File / Lock menu option.
- Right click on the tab in the tab bar to display the contextual menu for the tab and select the Locked menu option.
Once the file is locked a lock icon will be displayed on the left side of the tab to indicate its status.
To unlock a file, perform the same procedure used for locking a file except that the File / Unlock menu option should be used. Once the file is unlocked, the lock icon will be removed from the tab to indicate the file can continue to be edited.
In a few special cases like viewing the application user license and viewing the base preferences file, TKE will open the file in "read-only" viewing mode. The lock icon will be displayed in the tab in the same manner as a locked file; however, you will not be able to change the lock status of read-only files (their menu options will be greyed out to indicate that they are not available with the current file).
Note that files with a read-only permission value are not automatically locked by TKE when they are opened. Users can make changes to the edit buffer of a read-only file. When the file is attempted to be saved, TKE will display an error message specifying that the save was not possible due to permission issues.