User capability of create page/new page

I am working with the Role and Capabilities API for the first time today and making use of the the excellent Members plugin. Having tinkered around for some time I notice that the “edit pages” capability does two things:

1. Allow the user to create a new page
2. Allow the user to edit existing pages

I am trying to split this capability into two. I want my user to:

1. Not be able to create any new pages
2. Allow the user to edit existing pages

I am looking to write some code for my theme that allows this to happen. I can create a new capability very easily. The challenge is then getting WordPress to respond accordingly to it.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Yes, this is indeed a problem. A dedicated ‘create_posts’ capability is planed:

http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/16714