Add import ODT file support

For scientific text, which I currently process, I use LyX with all its extensions. It's free and the result is fabulous.
Good luck.
InDesign took me two weeks to master. LyX (in general LaTeX, TeX) even in years I can't say that I fully master it. LyX is not a WYSIWYG environment but WYSIWYM. No one guarantees you in InDesign that the file will be identical in print, while in LyX there is no deviation.

I feel ashamed of not having properly closed the question with a right answer!

Actually, since both OpenOffice Writer and LibreOffice Writer can export to DOC and DOCX and MS Word can open ODT documents to save them, it's probably not worth to buy WordFlow just for this feature.

Still hoping to see it in next release, since CC2018 did not included it

Thank you everybody for taking your time discussing about my question.

I find it quite strange that an ISO standard could be considered chaos while a proprietary standard is good,  but I imagine that being the standard for international e-government interoperability in Europe means nothing for USA based tycoons like Adobe and Microsoft, and it's just for few folks around the world...

I suppose that you do all your styling in inDesign, because actually I cannot imagine applying proper style to a mixed text coming from several sources (like the papers I need to put together in our university journal) inside Word ever since they introduced the style ribbon and remove the style drop down menu. I had to install it recently because some of my students benefits from Office 365 for Education editions and I needed to be able to explain how to achieve basic styling to them, so I actually know how the latest Office releases, and I was an advanced user since the time of "WordBasic" macros... and this was in the past millennium...

This said, changing the paragraph style in MS Word is a plain nightmare, not to talk about character style. Removing local format simply is not possible, you can only remove local format AND style in order to have everything back to "standard paragraph" ie "Normal". You need several clicks to move between the "used" style and "model" or "document" styles, paragraphs and character styles all sits together. Most of the users I know simply gave up about using the styles in Word simply because they could not have them work as intended and used local formatting instead.

I know that recently you can try to use regex search and find in Word too but they are years from what you can achieve in Writer when it comes to applying styles through regular expressions (I know GREP in inDesign is just as lovely, but again, why should have everybody working in indesign when I can import clean perfectly styled documents?)

I may be the only one here that prefers to insert a document with all the styling with a 1 to 1 connection between my Open Document styles and my inDesign template styles, it's so unusual that you can map that and make it default.

I agree that Word is the best app for basic users, it just decide in place of them for everything that could be too troublesome to understand, but I'm sorry, it's a plain pain for advanced users that need a tool that won't try to act on its own, IMHO.

I will keep on working with my Open Document text editor and export the files to a dumb Word format in order to import, but please, don't tell me it's because it's chaos

I will ask for feature on future releases and ask the people on the Open Documents forums that use inDesign to support it.

I personally disagree with your entire assessment but you can make your request known here: http://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html

Be aware that you need to make a case for why this will benefit a large number of users.

Sadly the answer to your question is somewhat in the question itself.

By that I mean it is Open Source - Anyone could edit the structure/format of the source however which way they want...

I'm not going to say that Adobe couldn't potentially do more to make integration better but certainly, this is one of the fundamental difficulties posed by open source software and it's this that makes Microsoft integration better with Indesign.

Imagine if you will - you are in charge of running a school - At first, your school has more than 5 different ways inside/outside of the building at any time of day and students can arrive from every direction, there are no controls on how to get in the building, no cameras, passcodes, Id badges or anything that a school should have - Then your "boss" tells you to track how each person arrives and make sure they get in by a certain time etc. This would be very difficult to do...

However suddenly enforce certain rules like funnelling - so there is only one way into the building - Or a digital passcode entry and this becomes a much easier task to manage.

The same difference can be found with Open Source programmes versus "Closed" Source such as Microsoft.

I would love open source programmes, sat navs etc. etc. if I was just a user.

But as a professional, they can make my life hell - essentially because there aren't enough fixed rules that make them for example....able to be integrated with InDesign an easy task.

As the saying goes...Life without order is Chaos... but Life with too much control is not worth living (a Dictatorship).

The biggest irony of our life and democracy (and greatest privilege I should add) is that we want to have order and control without knowing anything about it - The illusion of the freedom of choice - and we are willing to sacrifice people and blood to defend it.

BTW I feel I should add that - I'm not against democracy or free choice - Just grew up in a mostly military family and want their daily sacrifices to be known. I want freedom of choice and I am willing to sacrifice just as many things to defend it.

Out of curiosity what advanced styles can Writer do that word can't?