Name

CDA − Compound Document Architecture

Description

Digital’s CDA architecture for compound documents is an open architecture that establishes a framework for the interchange of many types of data in a multivendor environment.  Utilizing CDA converters, compound revisable format data can be handled much the same as ASCII text.  With CDA converters, you can write applications that handle compound documents, regardless of the environment in which you or application users are working. 

CDA includes the Digital Document Interchange Format (DDIF), the Data Object Transport Syntax (DOTS), and the Digital Table Interchange Format (DTIF).  Each of these formats is encoded using the Digital Data Interchange Syntax (DDIS).  Using these representations, CDA provides a method for manipulating files that contain a number of integrated components. 

The tools associated with CDA include the CDA Toolkit (libddif.a), the CDA Converter (the main converter is cdoc(),)), and the CDA Viewers. The CDA Toolkit is a collection of routines that support the creation of CDA applications. The CDA Converter converts files of a specified input format to a specified output format.  The CDA Viewers are used to display CDA-encoded files on a workstation display or character cell terminal.

All of the following products support CDA-encoded files.  If you only intend to manipulate CDA files, and do not have an interest in the particulars of the file format,  you can use any one of these products to manipulate a CDA-encoded file:

CDA Converters
CDA Viewers (dxvdoc, vdoc)
dxcardfiler
dxmail
dxpaint
PrintScreen

See Also

cdoc(1), vdoc(1), DDIF(5), DDIS(5), DOTS(5), DTIF(5)
Compound Document Architecture Manual