ok ....
Have just moved to FC4 (from RH8 + KDE-3.0) continuing with usual ~.bashrc umask 002 and usual 775 permissions on scripts and no distortions from kate noticed over 3 years of usage there.
(btw a lack of display of permission octals in the KDE dialog has always appealed as an odd ommission -- and have discovered my FC4 ~.bashrc umask was 004 in error, which may partly explain the 662 unwanted world write anomaly, although Kate should still not interfere with pre-mastered settings, should it?).
>>Do you notice similar things with kwrite also?
No. Kwrite seems ok ... no permissions clobbering on overwrites.
>> What if you say "umask 022" in ~/.bashrc?
Have tried this now too (including via a fresh login just to be sure) and Kate still clobbers the 775 setting, as well as replacing it corruptly with 644 (which should be 755 surely even if clobbering was desireable?).
I recall the default permissions on new backup files in RH8 being a slight nuisance too, but acceptable since Kate was actually mastering those.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Kstack