Not that you asked about… word processing in 2026 but:

🥚LibreOffice now speaks markdown! But it strips out comments, as there isn’t a standard

🥚Word does not yet speak markdown, but does support ODT files

🥚Google Docs can now export markdown and makes comments into footnotes

🥚LibreOffice supports password-protected ODT files, but nothing else reads them

🥚Password-protected .docx files are supported by LibreOffice and Google Docs either offers “Preview” or strips the encryption for editing, while TextEdit shows AES encryption noise

🥚BBEdit can open .docx files, though they are not exactly user-friendly

🥚Collabora and OnlyOffice (Sveiki!) reportedly support encrypted .docx files

(I rarely use file-level encryption but it has its place and readability is important)

🥚Word mail merge is very broken while LibreOffice’s worked quite well (used for the BSDCan 2025 badges)

🥚I hope the spreadsheets aren’t making up numbers and I fear the interoperability of presentations