edof

Reference: Word (.docx) import & export

New in 4.2.0.

EDOF can read and write Microsoft Word .docx files for document-mode documents (the continuous text flow used by the editor’s document mode).

This is an optional feature backed by python-docx:

pip install edof[docx]

If the package is missing, the functions raise a clear RuntimeError instead of failing obscurely.

The public entry points mirror the other importers:

Function	Purpose	Returns
edof.export_docx(doc, path)	Write a Document to .docx	DocxReport
edof.import_docx(path)	Read a .docx into a Document	Document (or (Document, DocxReport))

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Export

import edof

doc = edof.load("contract.edof")
report = edof.export_docx(doc, "contract.docx")
print(report.paragraphs, "paragraphs written")
for warning in report.warnings:
    print("note:", warning)

What is written:

• Paragraphs and runs with bold, italic, underline and strikethrough.
• Font family and font size.
• Run text colour.
• Paragraph alignment (left / center / right / justify).
• Page size and margins (taken from the EDOF page and document margins).
• Force-page-break-before-paragraph.
• Single-level bullet and numbered lists.
• Line height matched exactly to EDOF. EDOF computes a line’s height as font_size × line_height (em-based). Word’s “multiple” line-spacing rule instead multiplies the font’s natural line height (~1.15 em for Arial), which comes out noticeably taller. To keep pagination aligned, the exporter writes an exact line height in points equal to EDOF’s, so Word lays the text out at the same pitch and the page breaks line up with the editor.

If the document is not in document mode, the exporter falls back to gathering text from the page’s text boxes so something sensible is still produced.

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Import

import edof

doc = edof.import_docx("letter.docx")
doc.save("letter.edof")

Imports create a fresh document-mode EDOF document (A4, 15 mm margins) and lay the text out across pages. The following round-trips:

• Runs with bold / italic / underline / strikethrough.
• Font family and size, run colour.
• Paragraph alignment, page-break-before.
• Line spacing (Word “multiple” → EDOF multiplier; an exact spacing written by EDOF’s own exporter is converted back to a multiplier).
• Space before / after a paragraph.
• Bullet and numbered lists (single level; nesting level is best-effort).

Compatibility report

import_docx never silently drops content. Anything EDOF cannot represent yet is detected and reported. Pass return_report=True to inspect it:

doc, report = edof.import_docx("report.docx", return_report=True)

print("imported paragraphs:", report.paragraphs)
print("not supported:", report.unsupported)        # e.g. ['tables', 'images']

if not report.recommend_import:
    # Significant content (tables, images, drawings, …) would be lost.
    print("Not recommended:", report.recommend_reason)
else:
    doc.save("report.edof")

DocxReport fields:

Field	Meaning
paragraphs	number of body paragraphs imported / exported
warnings	non-blocking notes (e.g. simplified lists)
unsupported	list of content types that could not be represented
recommend_import	False when significant content would be lost
recommend_reason	human-readable explanation for the recommendation
summary()	one-string summary of the above

Not supported yet

These are reported and skipped (never silently imported):

• Major (triggers “not recommended”): tables, images / drawings, text boxes, equations, embedded objects.
• Minor (imported text is fine, these are dropped): headers / footers, footnotes / endnotes, comments.

Other Word features not represented: multi-level list numbering definitions, tab stops, style inheritance, sections / columns, fields, tracked changes.

The desktop editor exposes the same feature under File → Import Word (.docx)… and File → Export Word (.docx)…, and shows the compatibility report in a dialog before an import proceeds.

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Round-trip notes

Exporting then re-importing preserves the text and the formatting listed above. Because EDOF and Word use different line-spacing models, an exact round-trip of the spacing multiplier may differ by a hair (e.g. 1.15 vs 1.156) due to point-rounding; the visual line height is preserved.

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