The default behavior of Writer2xhtml is to export content and formatting. Alternatively you can export content only; this can be controlled with a configuration file. The configuration file cleanxhtml.xml uses some built-in text- and paragraph styles in OpenOffice.org to create well-structured XHTML documents, using most of the semantic tags offered by XHTML.
For your paragraphs, the style Text body is used for ordinary paragraphs: <p>...</p>.
<address>...</address>.
The style Quotations is used to produce blockquotes.
Several paragraphs with this style are collected to a single blockquote:
<blockquote><p>...</p><p>...</p></blockquote>.
The style preformatted text is used to produce <pre>...</pre>.
The style Horizontal line is used to produce <hr>.
If you format paragraphs with other styles, they will be exported as ordinary paragraphs (<p>) with a class attribute. For example this paragraph has style My Own Style, which will be exported as <p class=”MyOwnStyle”>...</p>.
OpenOffice.org does not support definition lists directly. Instead you can use two paragraph styles:
The style List Heading is used to produce the definition term <dt>...</dt>.
The style List Contents is used to produce the definition <dd>...</dd>.
Any sequence of these are wrapped in a single <dl>...</dl>, like this:
A number of text styles maps to XHTML elements as well: Use the text styles Citation – Definition – Emphasis – Example – Source Text – Strong Emphasis – Teletype – User entry – Variable to produce <cite>, <dfn>, <em>, <samp>, <code>, <strong>, <tt>, <kbd>, <var>.
If you export content only, hard character formatting is ignored in general. An exception to this rule is bold, italics, superscript, subscript and fixed pitch fonts, which are exported to <b>, <i>, <sup>, <sub> and <tt> respectively.