{{Short description|Electronic document format}} {{about|compound documents in general|the W3C standard|Compound Document Format||6=}} {{refimprove|date=November 2015}} In computing, a '''compound document''' is a document that "combines multiple document formats, either by reference, by inclusion, or both."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Wiggins |first1=Bob |title=Effective Document and Data Management |date=2012 |publisher=Gower Publishing Limited |location=Burlington, VT |isbn=978-1-4094-2328-7 |page=1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tyK8aGavlvQC&q=compound%20document |access-date=Dec 18, 2020}}</ref><ref>[https://www.w3.org/TR/2010/NOTE-CDR-20100819/#definitions Compound Document by Reference Framework 1.0]</ref> Compound documents are often produced using word processing software, and may include text and non-text elements such as barcodes, spreadsheets, pictures, digital videos, digital audio, and other multimedia features.
The first public implementation of compound documents was on the Xerox Star workstation, released in 1981.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/xerox-8010/index.html|title = DigiBarn: The Xerox Star 8010 (Dandelion)}}</ref>
Compound document technologies are commonly utilized on top of a software componentry framework, but the idea of software componentry includes several other concepts apart from compound documents, and software components alone do not enable compound documents. Well-known technologies for compound documents include: *ActiveX Documents *Bonobo by Ximian (obsolete, primarily used by GNOME) *KParts in KDE *Mixed Object Document Content Architecture *Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) *Object linking and embedding (OLE) by Microsoft; see Compound File Binary Format *Open Document Architecture from ITU-T (not used) *OpenDoc by IBM and Apple Computer (now defunct) *RagTime *Verdantium<ref>{{cite web |title=Verdantium |url=https://sourceforge.net/projects/verdantium |website=sourceforge |date=21 December 2015 |access-date=Dec 18, 2020}}</ref> *XML and XSL are encapsulation formats used for compound documents of all kinds
==See also== * COM Structured Storage * Multiple-document interface * Transclusion
==References== {{Reflist}}
Category:Electronic documents Category:Multimedia
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