Compound document

{{Short description|Electronic document format}}

{{about|compound documents in general|the W3C standard|Compound Document Format||6=}}

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In computing, a compound document is a document that "combines multiple document formats, either by reference, by inclusion, or both."{{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}}[https://www.w3.org/TR/2010/NOTE-CDR-20100819/#definitions Compound Document by Reference Framework 1.0] 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.

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 (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
• Verdantuim{{cite web |title=Verdantium |url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/verdantium |website=sourceforge |date=21 December 2015 |access-date=Dec 18, 2020}}
• XML and XSL are encapsulation formats used for compound documents of all kinds

The first public implementation of compound documents was on the Xerox Star workstation, released in 1981.{{Cite web|url=http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/xerox-8010/index.html|title = DigiBarn: The Xerox Star 8010 (Dandelion)}}