As of XMLmind XSL-FO Converter (XFC for short) v5[10], it becomes possible to generate RTF, WordprocessingML, Office Open XML (.docx) and OpenOffice (.odt) files where most of the text formatting is achieved using named paragraph styles ("Normal", "Heading 1", "Heading 2", etc) and named character styles ("Strong", "Emphasis", etc).
Moreover, a named paragraph style may reference a named numbering scheme (also known as a “list style”). This allows to implement numbered headings and advanced —multilevel— lists purely by using named paragraph styles.
The main benefits of generating named styles are for the end-user of the word processor files:
Thanks to the names of the styles, the document, when opened in MS-Word or OpenOffice/LibreOffice, looks familiar and its organization is easier to understand.
After a change, the numbering of headings and list items is automatically updated by the word processor.
The formatting of the document is a snap to modify using the various style editors included in the word processor.