The W3C Compound Document Formats Working Group has published the candidate recommendation of Compound Document by Reference Framework 1.0.
Combining content delivery formats can often be desirable in order to provide a seamless experience for the user.
For example, XHTML-formatted content can be augmented by SVG objects, to create a more dynamic, interactive and self adjusting presentation. A set of standard rules is required in order to provide this capability across a range of user agents and devices.
These are examples of possible Compound Document profiles:
XHTML + SVG + MathML
XHTML + SMIL
XHTML + XForms
XHTML + VoiceML
This document defines a generic Compound Document by Reference Framework (CDRF) that defines a language-independent processing model for combining arbitrary document formats.
NOTE: The Compound Document Framework is language-independent. While it is clearly meant to serve as the basis for integrating W3C's family of XML formats within its Interaction Domain (e.g., CSS, MathML, SMIL, SVG, VoiceXML, XForms, XHTML, XSL) with each other, it can also be used to integrate non-W3C formats with W3C formats or integrate non-W3C formats with other non-W3C formats.
