Compound Document
A compound document is a versatile type of digital file that integrates multiple data formats, including text, graphics, audio, and video. These documents can either contain all the data within a single file or link to external data stored elsewhere. The concept of compound documents has evolved significantly since the early 1980s, notably with the introduction of Xerox Star, which aimed to create a user-friendly system for managing such documents. Over the years, various software solutions have emerged to facilitate the creation and editing of compound documents, such as Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat, enabling users to easily embed multimedia elements and link to other data sources.
By the mid-2010s, most digital word processors had adopted features allowing for such integration, allowing for a richer presentation of information. For instance, Microsoft Word supports embedding graphics and charts, while specialized programs like PowerPoint are designed specifically for creating presentations that combine text, images, and multimedia. Additionally, the compatibility of different word processors and document formats, such as OpenDoc and PDF, has contributed to the accessibility and functionality of compound documents across various platforms. This evolution reflects a growing need to present complex information in an engaging and interactive format, catering to diverse user preferences and technological advancements.
On this Page
Compound Document
A compound document is a document that incorporates multiple formats or kinds of data, including graphics, video, and audio data. Compound documents may be constructed so that all data associated with the document is contained within a single digital file or such that the document uses links to data stored in other locations. Companies offering word processing have created individual types of compound document formats that can be used to create master files that are linked to each file included in the compound document.
Brief History
A document is a physical or digital body of material, usually text, focused on a single topic. Books, papers, and articles are examples of documents. The term compound document is used to refer to documents that contain other types of data in addition to text, such as graphics, audio data, or video files. Using word-processing software, users can incorporate multiple types of data into a single document or can use a document as a map, directing readers to data stored or presented in other places.
The 1981 release of the Xerox Star workstation by Xerox has been cited as the earliest attempt to build a system capable of creating and reading compound digital documents. Though the Xerox Star system was unsuccessful commercially, the way that the system handled compound documents was integrated into later attempts to build document display and editing programs.
Xerox Star was also the first commercially available computer to use a graphical user interface (GUI), which is a system that displays data through a computer as digital objects on a computer screen. The development of GUI systems in the 1980s led to a model of word processing based on the idea of a "clipboard" where users could cut and paste different kinds of data into a document. However, few computer systems had a way for a computer to interpret and display different types of data to users.
In 1991, Microsoft debuted their Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) system, a complex series of software components that linked files from different programs into a document. This was later integrated under Microsoft’s Common Object Model (COM) approach to document editing, which allows for the editing of objects created in different programs "in place" within a document.
As Microsoft’s OLE and COM systems were proprietary and could not be used on non-Microsoft computers, Microsoft’s chief competitors, Apple, IBM, and WordPerfect, cooperated to create an alternative to OLE called OpenDoc, which was not proprietary and could therefore be used on any computer. The program was not widely successful, but led to later innovations in document management.
Compound Documents Today
By the mid-2010s most digital word processors and document creation programs had the capability to allow users to create compound documents using different types of data. Microsoft Word, a word processing program created and sold by Microsoft, allows users to embed photos and graphics created in a variety of programs, in several different file formats, into a document. Microsoft Word also has a library of premade graphics that can be inserted into a document built into the program. In addition, Word and most other modern word processing programs have included subprograms that allow users to embed audio data, including songs or voice recordings, and video data, such as video clips or animated graphics, into a document from within the word processing interface.
Some word processors have specific functions for incorporating data from related programs. For instance, Microsoft Word is designed to easily incorporate data from Microsoft Excel, a program offered as part of the Microsoft Office Suite that allows users to create numerical and text spreadsheets. Microsoft Word integrates with Excel so that charts, lists, graphs, and spreadsheets created in Excel can easily be included in the document. Similarly, Adobe Systems document creation software Adobe Acrobat has built-in functions that make it easier for users to embed data created in other Adobe programs, like Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects, in documents created in Acrobat.
There are also specialized types of document creation programs built primarily for creating compound documents. One example is Microsoft PowerPoint, a popular presentation program that creates specialized PowerPoint (.ppt) files that can be displayed as slideshows. PowerPoint’s default system and templates are designed to make it easy for users to embed graphics, video, audio, and text on each page of the document using similar programs to those included in modern word processors.
While Microsoft Word is one of the world’s most popular word processors, there are a variety of alternative word processors available that can create and edit compound documents. For instance, WordPerfect, a Windows-based word processor owned by Corel, uses the same compound document creation programs used in Microsoft Word, including the OLE and COM document management formats. Apple similarly has a word-processing program, Pages, that has built-in compound document creation capabilities. The Portable Document Format (PDF) is another type of document, created by Adobe Systems in 1993. PDF documents are designed to work with a variety of operating systems and are therefore not specific to Windows, Mac OS, or other operating systems. Programs that create and edit PDF documents, like Adobe Acrobat, have the capability to create compound PDFs that have linked audio or video files. However, because these elements rely on Adobe’s video program, Flash, embedded videos in PDFs do not work on all computers.
In addition to compound documents in which various types of data are integrated into the same document, using web and cloud storage users can create documents that contain links to data stored on the Internet. In this way, documents can lead readers to video files stored on YouTube or similar video-sharing services, or audio files stored on sound-file sharing sites such as SoundCloud. Readers accessing the document on a computer or handheld device can then choose to click a link to access the linked files through their web browser.
Microsoft’s ActiveX Document program, an extension of the OLE and COM system, provides one example of a modern, browser-based compound document system. Each ActiveX Document is essentially a server that can display and allow editing of data from a variety of sources.
Bibliography
Brockschmidt, Kraig. "How OLE and COM Solve the Problems of Component Software Design." MSDN. Microsoft, May 1996. Web. 17 June 2015.
"Compound Structure." Instructure, 3 Dec. 2024, developerdocs.instructure.com/services/canvas/basics/file.compound‗documents. Accessed 13 Jan. 2025. "Compound Documents." MSDN. Microsoft, 2015. Web. 17 June 2015.
De Lara, Eyal, Dan S. Wallach, and Willy Zwaenepoel. A Characterization of Compound Documents on the Web. Tech. no. TR-99-351. Houston: Rice U, 1999. Digital file.
Duyshart, Bruce. The Digital Document. New York: Architectural, 1997. Print.
Eiron, Nadav, and Kevin S. McCurley. "Untangling Compound Documents on the Web." Proceedings of the Fourteenth ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia. New York: ACM, 2003. 85–94. Digital file.
Hansen, Steven M. Mastering Excel 2003 Programming with VBA. Hoboken: Wiley, 2006. 300–308. Print.
Larsen, Rob. Beginning HTML and CSS. Hoboken: Wiley, 2013. Print.
Pally, Joseph, and Salih Yurttas. "Function-Agnostic Documents." International Journal of Information Studies 2.1 (2010): 22–29. Digital file.