Is it possible to prevent the .hal file from being overwritten?

Is there a way to prevent the .hal file from being overwritten? If you manually edit the .hal file, everything gets overwritten by pncconf. Is there a setting to ensure that only the parts that were actually modified get overwritten in the .hal file?
Thanks,
Hans

No, once you get a working config stop using pncconf and edit by hand.

I am pretty sure MesaCT does not overwrite them, but been quite some time since i used it.
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In case you want to prevent overwriting config files that are good and done with editing, you can use the file explorer and set the permissions to read only.

chattr +i foo.hal

That prevents linux itself from modifying the file (even as root) until you -i it.
But as Rod said, once you start manually editing it, you can't use the wizards any more.