https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1119711
--- Comment #7 from Brian (bex) Exelbierd bexelbie@redhat.com --- There is a flag --reference-odt=filename.odt to call the reference file.
I did a bit more digging in the code and I believe the following to be true:
the ODT.hs writer opens the reference.odt and puts it verbatim into the output. It doesn't parse it or look to see if there are styles it can use.
It also doesn't appear that OpenDocument defines default styles or style names. It appears this is all implementation dependent. Therefore, the fact that I have a bullet list defined in my reference.odt isn't being considered. It seems the way to fix this is to do one of the following (rough ideas):
1) Search the odt styles and figure out if there is a bullet list. If so, pick one and use it. If not create our own default, ideally with bullets we can reasonably guarantee to exist.
2) Do something like the reST (reStructuredText) converter does and specify what styles will be used. Those can then be defined in the shipped reference.odt and supplied in a user provided reference.odt. You can see their documentation here: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/odt.html#list-styles I don't know that it is necessary to go further with allowing those names to be overriden.
Today's standard of using some LO style names and then defining custom lists seems to be a weird hybrid.
Lastly, it appears that bulletListToOpenDocument in the OpenDocument.hs writer is creating a new list style for each level of indention. This seems to indicate that listhandling may need to be refactored.
I realize you aren't going to work on it immediately, but I wanted to add these thoughts in case they help later.