Comment 55 for bug 209695

Binary package hint: mozilla-thunderbird

When clicking on an attachment to a Thunderbird mail message, OpenOffice will open that attachment in read-only mode. This is new behaviour in 8.04 LTS, and has been implemented in response to bug #87101. However, I personally consider this new behaviour to be a bug, as it creates workflow hurdles.

Consider the following example: I receive a spreadsheet as an attachment. I open it, and in looking at it want to do something minor like add a column of numbers or some other minor operation. In this case I have no interest in saving those changes. However, in order to do this simple task, I have to actually save the file to a local directory, add my numbers, then go and delete the file afterwards (or gather loads of unwanted files on my hard disk).

I understand the rationale behind the original bug report, but I disagree with the implementation of the "fix". I think a more logical solution to bug 87101 is to warn the user at the time they try to save something to /tmp, rather than assume that in all cases someone wants changes to be permanent. The core issue is trying to stop people from saving to temp storage, and so I think the solution should be targetted there. I think the current behaviour of forcing a file to be opened read only gets in the way in a number of situations, and is a bug.