Compound document
In computing, a compound document is a document that “combines multiple document formats, either by reference, by inclusion, or both.” 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
- 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.