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document Last modified: Tuesday, March 25, 2003

(n.) In the PC world, the term was originally used for a file created with a word processor. In addition to text, documents can contain graphics, charts, and other objects. Increasingly, the line separating word processing files from files produced by other applications is becoming blurred. A word processing application can produce graphics and a graphics application can produce words. This trend has accelerated with technologies such as OLE and OpenDoc that allow an application to combine many components. Consequently, the term document is used more and more to describe any file produced by an application. Interestingly, the term has always been used this way in Macintosh environments. (v.) To enter written explanations. For example, programmers are always exhorted to document their code by inserting comments.