BikeHelmet's Journal: OpenOffice moving backwards?

I stumbled across a serious issue months back, which didn't exist in earlier versions of OOo. OOo 3.0 removed the option to associate file types, instead opting for the "I'll either do it or I won't." model. This is very confusing for users, and system administrators. The only way to fix it is complex registry changes, which is downright awkward to explain over the phone.

After upgrading to OOo 3.0, OpenOffice may(or may not) be associated with commonly used filetypes like .doc, .rtf, .xls, etc.; it makes the decision to associate itself based on an incomplete list of software that it checks to see if you have installed. It looks for things like Word, Excel, etc., neglecting to consider that there's other less well known office programs, and neglecting to associate itself if an extension lacks a program to open it.

I myself removed Wordpad from Windows, and deleted the .rtf registry entries. OOo 3.0 made no attempts to associate itself with them, yet OOo 2.4 figured it out just fine.

More info on the issue can be found here and here. Lets get this issue some attention, before OOo digs its own poorly thought out grave!

------- Additional comments from willkil Sun Feb 15 01:09:10 +0000 2009 -------

I disagree w/ the statement about 3 choices. There are only 2 states: make OOo
the *default* application or not. "Not register at all" doesn't make sense as a
choice. If there is not already an association for a given type, the checkbox
should default on. If there is an association already, the checkbox should be
off. But for *all* supported filetypes, OOo should associate as an *available*
application so that OOo at least appears under "Open With ->"