[orionblastar]

Trust but verify.

Microsoft has changed over the years and is not the same company in 1997. It used to hate FOSS projects and now they contribute to them. MSFT used to hate Linux and now they embrace it adding Ubuntu support to Windows 10.

Sure never forget, but if you see changes for the better, learn how to forgive. If they go back to the way they were in 1997, just speak up about it.

Microsoft adapted to tablets with Surface and they seem to do well for artists using pressure sensitive pens.

[webmaven]

> if you see changes for the better, learn how to forgive

Sure, I'll consider doing so when an Office user can set OpenOffice as the default format, or at least when they open an OpenOffice file, that Office will save that file as OpenOffice by default.

I guess this comes down to Microsoft failing basic verification.

[orionblastar]

I remember there was a setting in 2007 or 2010 to change the default document standard but I forgot how it worked.

You can set OpenOffice or LibreOffice for document default types in Windows.

I like Libreoffice because it does more file standards than MS Office. Someone emailed a Word Perfect document to a group my wife was in and MS Office could not open it. So I used LibreOffice to open it and convert it to Doc format for my wife so her group can use it.

[webmaven]

> there was a setting in 2007 or 2010 to change the default document standard but I forgot how it worked.

TL/DR: Badly.

OK, it looks like it has been possible to set the default file types to Open Document Formats for several years, I just hadn't noticed.

But I naively thought that with that capability would come support for more MS Office features when saving in ODF, or at least that features not supported by MS Office in ODF would be disabled or hidden if ODF is set as the default to keep users from shooting themselves in the foot.

How silly of me:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between...

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Differences-between...

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Supported-features-...

Basically, even if you set ODF as the default, if you use a feature that is not supported (such as putting a table in a presentation slide) everything looks fine until you hit save. Saving the file saves a downgraded version of your work (a table on a slide is converted to an image), and you probably only get one warning pop-up that says "some features may not be supported". I bet the still-open file continues to look and act fine. No, the problems with the saved file are only apparent much later.

Imagine the user's surprise when they re-open their presentation deck file (remember, created and saved in MS Office) the next day and many aspects of their work on that presentation were never saved or have been downgraded to uselessness...

And that doesn't even address the fact that many of these "unsupported" features are ones that ODF actually supports perfectly well, but that Microsoft just hasn't implemented for saving in ODF.

My, what an exceptionally lovely user experience that is. It just oozes good faith and sincerity of effort toward interoperability, doesn't it?