Add export to standard OpenDocument format (ODF)

[louis-vgn]

Feature Request

Is your feature request related to a problem or unsupported use case? Please describe.
At Nubo (interministerial cloud of DGFiP) we don’t even have access to the Office suite, so no Word document. We only use LibreOffice, which should be the de facto go-to format for word processing documents. Right now, we are unable to use the Impress as we cannot export documents to .odt format.

Describe the solution you'd like
Add export option to ODT file format (ideally prioritize it).

I see it is already in the roadmap (https://github.com/orgs/numerique-gouv/projects/13/views/1?filterQuery=odt&pane=issue&itemId=86564553 and https://github.com/orgs/numerique-gouv/projects/13/views/1?filterQuery=odt&pane=issue&itemId=86564864), but it has a status of draft. It’d be great if it could have a higher priority, so that I can recommend it.

[louis-vgn]

Amazing job btw.

[virgile-dev]

@louis-vgn can you open docx files with libre office at DGFIP ?

FYI @YousefED :)

[louis-vgn]

@virgile-dev OOXML (Microsoft’s "open" standard) is not and will most likely never be fully supported by any free software due to the complexity of its implementation. In addition, it has three different flavors used in the wild (ECMA, Transitional, and Strict), when two of them should be deprecated, bringing inconsistencies between format versions and incompatibility that even the proprietary vendor cannot resolve itself.

This, concretely, means that when sharing DOCX documents, not only will they probably be incompatible between public agents’ computers, but also citizens’ ones as you cannot guess which version of Word they have, and if it supports the format you sent.

As a matter of fact, quickly looking at the source of the example document named "🎓 Guide de démarrage sur Docs", it looks like it is using Transitional format, which is not the one really intended to be the ISO standard (though it is a proper standard…). More here: https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/document/complex-singularity-versus-openness and here https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML. Also, I insist on that: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML#L'aveu_m%C3%AAme_de_Microsoft_:_ODF_a_clairement_gagn%C3%A9

So the question is: why bother use DOCX when ODF exists and is an open, reliable standard? Especially when making open source software 😉

It’d be really nice to prioritize ODF over DOCX for all those reasons.