Example of a compound document in Microsoft Office Word

In computing, a compound document is a document type typically produced using word processing software, and is a regular text document intermingled with non-text elements such as spreadsheets, pictures, digital videos, digital audio, and other multimedia features. It can also be used to collect several documents into one.

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
• Object linking and embedding (OLE) by Microsoft
• Open Document Architecture from ITU-T (not used)
• OpenDoc by Apple Computer (now defunct)
• Verdantium
• XML and XSL are encapsulation formats used for compound documents of all kinds

While the origins of the compound document are uncertain, the first public implementation was on the Xerox Star workstation, released in 1981.^[1]

[edit] See also

• Structured storage
• Transclusion

[edit] References

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