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§0.1 Preliminary postscript:Decipherment, attribution/completion and English translation of the Latin text fragment have been solved thanks to two other early answers°°, closely followed by mine, see respectively §2.3, 2.1 & 2.4 below.°° A groundbreaking first answer by Christopher Nowak and a near-perfect translation by User-10655465126230970230 which -typically!- got almost no upvotes… Most upvotes have been racked up by a slightly later answer that —without giving any due credits— adroitly merged and summarized the three earlier answers & comments into a bite-sized, fast-snack Wiki-like answer.§0.2 Warning :As my answer refuses to be intellectual fast-food, but is a purposefully drawn-out, very Quora-unlike attempt at “marginal” writing, I structured it into paragraphs, so as to allow my more hasty readers to easily skip the more technical parts :the Drawing : the “trumpet in butt” as a “droll” marginal illustration rather than a real illumination ;the Text : gives the English translation of part of the Latin “Elucidanus” (ca 1098) , attributed to Honorius of Autun. A theological Question& Answer digest of Augustinian predestination theology ;APPENDIX 1 : a “trumpet butt” line from St. Augustine’s City of God (Book 14.24), an unintendedly “droll” text fragment that illustrates (here in English translation) the very dark heart of … puritanism ;APPENDIX 2 : etymological cycle from “farce” to “droll” to “farce”The Drawings§1.1 The “trumpet in butt” drawing in the margin of the Rothschild Canticles (Beinecke MS 404, fol. 134r, see below) probably bears no relation whatsoever to the surrounding Latin text and could be —as most other answers here like to imagine— a bored scribe’s scatological joke …An irreverent joke that has unintentionally turned into an internet ‘clickbait’, thus saving the manuscript and its now unfashionable theological text from utter oblivion, else doomed to be stacked away in a dusty(?) Yale library.Such bizarre and vulgar drawings in the margins (not real ‘illuminations’ but ‘marginalia’ or ‘grotesques’) must have been very common in medieval manuscripts (but … no statistics found).See anthology of : Bizarre and vulgar illustrations from illuminated medieval manuscripts … ‘with lots of butts’.See also florilegium of : Enluminures étranges au Moyen Age … with still more stuff going in or out of arses. (My 5 year-old grandson simply couldn’t get enough of this!)1.2 I myself would venture that the drawings in the margins could be the work of a second ‘scribe’ (or rather of a specialist ‘illuminator’) as they seem a bit too elaborate (and abundant, see §1.3 below) to be just the careless doodle of the same scribe that too hastily (see PRAEFATIO under §2.2) copied the text.Especially as the manuscript MS 404 is allegedly (can someone else substantiate?) from 14th century Flanders where MOST manuscripts …… were no longer made by monks in their ‘cubicle cells’ within monasteries (notwithstanding Umberto Eco’s 1327 illuminator monk Adelmo in ‘The Name of the Rose’, very few monasteries had a dedicated ‘scriptorium’!). Instead, manuscripts were manufactured in two kinds of specialized workshops (each with 1 artisan master, a few journeymen and some apprentices), one of which produced the written portion or Manuscript, while the other produced the images or Illuminations for the Illuminated Manuscript. Moreover, the ‘oil painting on wood technique’ typical for 14th c. Flanders bore enough similarities to the ‘illumination technique’ so that you could easily find painters there doing illumination and vice versa.Above : Rothschild Canticles. Flanders, 14th century. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 404, folio 134r , Yale University.8° ff. 133v-140v: Quid est predestinatio (...). Two excerpts from the Elucidanus attributed to Honorius of Autun, Book II, folio 28-45 (above from folio 35!) & BookIII.27-30; PL 172.1109-76.From : Full text of "Catalogue of medieval and renaissance manuscripts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University".1.3 At last, I also found the Yale site where you can scroll through all the droll successive pages of the MS 404, and the text-linked illuminations turn out to be far in the minority, as all the margins are brimming with grotesque gargoyle miniatures of monks, monkeys, mongrels, mongoose (ay me!) & other monsters : https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3432521As an example see the full context of the pages 133-verso and 134-recto, where there is only one rare, real illumination in the body of the text and directly illustrating it : a drawing of a beardless Disciple questioning his bearded Magister over a book.1.4 As the OP (Original Poster) for this question, I had hoped that it could be an illumination of my pet famous farcical line from St. Augustine’s City of God (Book 14.24) :“ …Nonnulli ab imo, sine paedore, ullo ita numerosos pro arbitrio sonitus edunt, ut ex illa etiam parte cantare videantur. …”“Some people from their bottom, without stench, produce at will such musical sounds that they seem to be singing from that region.”1.4 bis, Marginal note : The above-quoted, droll°°, farcical line by St. AugustineI extracted from one of the most interesting texts that ever flowed from the murky heart of puritanism, unintendedly revealing the deep (mostly ‘virile’) fear of loss of control that is always lurking behind it. See the APPENDIX_1 added at the end of my post.°° “drol(l)” : meaning “turd” in my native Dutch (see appendix 2)2. the Text2.1 Thanks to a groundbreaking first answer by Christopher Nowak and a near-perfect translation by User-10655465126230970230 , I could easily google up other text sources and found that our fragment is a copy from Book II folio 35 of the Elucidarium by Honorius of Autun (1098) :ELUCIDARIUM SIVE DIALOGUS DE SUMMA TOTIUS CHRISTIANAE THEOLOGIAE is an encyclopedic work or summa about medieval Christian theology and folk belief, originally written in the late 11th century by Honorius Augustodunensis (i.e. of Autun), influenced by Anselm of Canterbury and John Scotus Eriugena. It was probably complete by 1098. (…)The work is set in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a student, the Disciple (abbrev. D.) and his teacher (abbrev. M.=Magister), divided in three books. (…)The work was very popular from the time of his composition and remained so until the end of the medieval period. The work survives in more than 300 manuscripts of the Latin text. The theological topic is embellished with many loans from the native folklore of England, and was embellished further in later editions and vernacular translations.2.2 Original text in print : the Giles edition 1844The editio princeps (principal edition) of the Elucidarium is that of the Patrologia Latina, vol. 172 (Paris 1895), edited by J.A. Giles 1844, published by Jacques-Paul Migne between 1841 and 1855, with indices published between 1862 and 1865.I found a full printed version on the following sites…The Elucidarium and other tracts in Welsh from Llyvyr agkyr Llandewivrevi A.D. 1346 (Jesus college ms. 119) : Jones, John Morris, Sir, 1864-1929 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet ArchiveOr in searchable text form : Full text of "The Elucidarium and other tracts in Welsh from Llyvyr agkyr Llandewivrevi A.D. 1346 (Jesus college ms. 119)"Skip the translation in medieval Welsh and go to page 198 of the APPENDIX, from the 1844 Giles edition, which corresponds to the editio princeps with additional various readings from Laud MS. 237 in the Bodleian.ELUCIDARIUM SIVE DIALOGUS DE SUMMA TOTIUS CHRISTIANAE THEOLOGIAE (Opp. B. Lanfranci, edit. J. A. Giles, LL.D., F.cclesiae Anglicanae presbyteri, Oxonii 1844, 8", t. II, p. 280.— Exstat quoque in appendice ad Opera S. Anselmi Cantuar., edit. Paris. 1721, curante D. Gerberonio.)i.e. also available in the appendix to the works of Anselm of Canterbury, successor of Lanfranc to the archbishopric of Canterbury.A preface was written by the editor J.A. Gilles in 1844 :PRAEFATIO (PREFACE) : Elucidarium or Dialogues, etc., text which is among the works of Anselmus, with a codex manuscript. Bibl.Reg. Paris. 5134.I compiled accurately. This codex is from the 13th century, ill written and showing signs of a too hasty a scribe. There were however many things that were useful to me for the correction of the text. A. edit. Anselmi Paris. P. cod. MS. Paris. designat . GILES.LIBER PRIMUSD. (=Discipilus) : “Gloriose Magister, rogo ut ad quaesita mihi ne pigriteris respondere.”M.=Magister: “Equidem faciam, quantum mihi vires ipse dabit…”BOOK the FIRSTD. (=Student): “Glorious Master, I beg you to not to delay to respond to my questions …”M. (=Master) : “For my part, I will do as much as I have the strength,…”2.3 Latin text EXTENDED :Here follows an extract from the 1844 Giles edition, page 198 (= folios 34 & 35 of the Welsh Elucidarium).The part overlapping with the photo fragment of our Rothschild Canticles (Beinecke MS 404, fol. 134r) is rendered in bold and the deviations of the Beinecke MS 404 from the 1844 Giles edition are <between angle brackets > : < >.Two words omitted in the Beinecke MS 404 are ((between round brackets)) : ((in eis)) .LIBER SECUNDUS (Second BOOK )(…)(end of folio 34 of the Welsh Elucidarium:)D. (=Discipilus = pupil) : Si nullus potest salvari, nisi praedestinati, ad quid alii creati sunt, vel in quo sunt rei, quod pereant ?— M. (= Magister = Master) : Quidquid praedestinati faciant, perire nequeunt, quia omnia cooperantur illis in bonum, etiam ipsa peccata. Nam post graviora peccata humiliores erunt, et de sua salvatione laudes Deo referent. Reprobi autem propter electos sunt creati, ut per eos in virtutibus exerceantur, et a vitiis corrigantur, et eorum collatione gloriosiores appareant ; et cum eos in tormentis viderint, de sua evasione amplius gaudeant. Qui etiam propter seipsos juste …(start folio 35 : ) … pereunt cum malum sponte sua eligunt, diligunt et volunt <eligant, diligunt et vellent> sine fine vivere, ut possint <possent> sine fine peccare.D. : Quare permittit Deus electos <sine fine°°°> peccare?— M : <Rx> Ut patefaciat ((in eis)) divitias misericordiae suae.D. : <quo> salvantur praedestinati, si non laborant?— M. : <Rx> Praedestinatio taliter instituta est ut precibus vel laboribus obtineatur, ut dicitur : Per multas tribulationes oportet nos intrare in regnum Dei {Act. xiv. 24). Parvulis itaque per mortis acerbitatem, provectis autem aetate datur praedestinatio per laborum exercitationem. Quia vero scriptum est : In domo Patris mei mansiones multae sunt (Joan. xiv. 2), unusquisque obtinebit mansionem secundum proprium laborem : ita prout ^uis plus ' A., eaedem. ^ A., ae/ernas.°°<Rx> or R-crossed : abbreviation of a word beginning with “R” , here probably “Respondit” = ‘he answers’ ; a distant relative to our contemporary pharmaceutical abbreviation for “Recipe”?2.4 TRANSLATION of the Latin EXTENDED text(end of folio 34 of the Elucidarium:)—D.: If none can be saved, except the predestined ones, what are the others (the reprobate) created for, if not (??) only to be damned?—M.: Whatever the predestined do, they cannot be damned, because all things work together to their advantage, even their own sins. Because after their more serious sins, they will feel humbled and will offer praises to God for their salvation. The reprobate, on the other hand, are created for the sake of the elect, so that through them the latter may exercise virtue and may be amended from vice, and may appear the more glorious in comparison and rejoice the more seeing the torments that they have escaped from and which are inflicted on the reprobate. These then justly of their own accord …(folio 35) …are damned, as of their own free will they have chosen evil, cherishing it and wanting to go on living with no end, in order to keep sinning with no end.D.: Why does god allow the chosen to sin <with no end> ?— I\I. : - . To show ((through them)) the riches of His mercy.D.: (How?) are the predestined saved, if they do not work <for their salvation> ?<the continuation was graciously translated by Michael Wright, former Lecturer at University of Auckland, whose witty answer merits much more upvotes … : >Predestination is set up in such a way that it may be gained by prayers or works, as it is said: “We ought to enter the kingdom of God through many tribulations” [Acts 14: 22]. Predestination (sc. to salvation) is given to infants through the bitterness of death, but to those of advanced age through the practice of works. Because in truth it is written: “in my Father’s house are many mansions/lodgings (John 14:2), and each person will obtain their lodging according to their own work.”3. APPENDIX 13.1 Introduction : (being an extract of note 25i (ex-24L) of …The Devil’s NOTES on “The Butcher and the Devil’s Ass” .…. The puritan temptation (Protestant Puritan or more generally Christian or Islamic or Platonic or Communist or whatever) is one of the most insidious, “pure” and clean, innocent-looking perversions of the soul as it tries to sever the link to our own deep animality, denaturing our primeval (but sublimable) sexual urge into the brutal parody of bestiality and leading to easy demonization and dehumanization of “impure” others.At its very heart, its very dark heart, puritanism is motivated by a self-hidden yearning for unlimited power over others & complete control and mastery over the self, coupled with a deep fear ) of “loss of control” by that same (mostly ‘virile’) self, as characteristically happens during orgasm.That’s why, Saint Augustine has this ‘dry dream’-phantasm in his City of God (Book 14. chapters 24 & 26) , of how Adam and Eve before their original Sin and before the Fall, could have had (ideal, unsinful) sex without involuntary arousal: (…)From : The Devil’s NOTES on “The Butcher and the Devil’s Ass” , note 25i.3.2 English TEXT ofSt. Augustine’s The City of God, Book XIV, chapters 24 & 26 :http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120114.htmChapter 24.— That If Men Had Remained Innocent and Obedient in Paradise, the Generative Organs Should Have Been in Subjection to the Will as the Other Members are.The man, then, would have sown the seed, and the woman received it, as need required, the generative organs being moved by the will, not excited by lust. (…)I will not press the fact that some animals have a natural power to move a single spot of the skin with which their whole body is covered, if they have felt on it anything they wish to drive off,—a power so great, that by this shivering tremor of the skin they can not only shake off flies that have settled on them, but even spears that have fixed in their flesh.Man, it is true, has not this power; but is this any reason for supposing that God could not give it to such creatures as He wished to possess it? And therefore man himself also might very well have enjoyed absolute power over his members had he not forfeited it by his disobedience; for it was not difficult for God to form him so that what is now moved in his body only by lust should have been moved only at will.We know, too, that some men are differently constituted from others, and have some rare and remarkable faculty of doing with their body what other men can by no effort do, and, indeed, scarcely believe when they hear of others doing. There are persons who can move their ears, either one at a time, or both together. (…) Some so accurately mimic the voices of birds and beasts and other men, that, unless they are seen, the difference cannot be told.♫♫♫ Some have such command of their bowels, that they can BREAK WIND continuously at pleasure, so as to produce the effect of singing ♫♫♫.I myself have known a man who was accustomed to sweat whenever he wished. It is well known that some weep when they please, and shed a flood of tears.(…)Seeing, then, that even in this mortal and miserable life the body serves some men by many remarkable movements and moods beyond the ordinary course of nature, what reason is there for doubting that, before man was involved by his sin in this weak and corruptible condition, his members might have served his will for the propagation of offspring without lust? Man has been given over to himself because he abandoned God, while he sought to be self-satisfying; and disobeying God, he could not obey even himself. (…)Chapter 25.— Of True Blessedness, Which This Present Life Cannot Enjoy.(…)Chapter 26.— That We are to Believe that in Paradise Our First Parents Begot Offspring Without Blushing.In Paradise, then, man lived as he desired so long as he desired what God had commanded. He lived in the enjoyment of God, and was good by God's goodness; he lived without any want, and had it in his power so to live eternally. He had food that he might not hunger, drink that he might not thirst, the tree of life that old age might not waste him. There was in his body no corruption, nor seed of corruption, which could produce in him any unpleasant sensation. He feared no inward disease, no outward accident. Soundest health blessed his body, absolute tranquillity his soul. (..)The honest love of husband and wife made a sure harmony between them. Body and spirit worked harmoniously together, and the commandment was kept without labor. No languor made their leisure wearisome; no sleepiness interrupted their desire to labor.<WARNING : Now follows the first of 3 consecutive paragraphs for which all English internet texts - even in this our so-called “Enlightened Age”- puritanically decline to offer a translation from Latin, so I translated them myself, though my Latin is very rusty … : >In tanta facilitate rerum et felicitate hominum, absit ut suspicemur, non potuisse prolem seri sine libidinis morbo: sed eo voluntatis nutu moverentur illa membra qua caetera, et sine ARDORIS illecebroso stimulo cum tranquillitate animi et corporis nulla corruptione integritatis infunderetur gremio maritus uxoris.God keep us from believing that with such facility in all things and so great bliss, Man would have been incapable of engendering without the help of concupiscence. But the parts intended for generation (copulation) would have been moved, like the other members, by the command of the will alone. And , without feeling in his flesh any sting of VOLUPTUOUSNESS, and without the virginity of his wife suffering any injury, in complete tranquility of mind, the husband would have let the seed flow quietly into the wife’s womb.Neque enim quia experientia probari non potest, ideo credendum non est; quando illas corporis partes non ageret turbidus calor, sed spontanea POTESTAS <Roman legal term: “coercion by a magistrate”!> , sicut opus, adhibebret; ita tunc potuisse utero conjugis salva integritate feminei genitalis virile semen immitti, sicut nunc potest cadem integritate salva ex utero virginis fluxus menstrui cruoris emitti.If it be objected that we can not invoke here the testimony of experience, I reply that this is no reason to be incredulous; for it is sufficient to know that it is free-flowing WILLPOWER and not a turbulent ardor that would have presided over the copulation. Besides, why should the marital seed necessarily have injured the integrity of the woman, when we know that the passing of the months does not affect the integrity of the girl?Eadem quippe via posset illud injici, qua hoc potest ejici. Ut enim ad pariendum non doloris gemitus, sed maturitatis impulsus feminea viscera relaxaret: sic ad foetandum et concipiendum non libidinis appetitus, sed voluntarius usus naturam utramque conjungeret.Injection, emission, both operations are inverse, but the road is the same. The copulation would thus have been accomplished with the same facility as childbirth; for the woman would have given birth without pain, and the child would have emerged from the womb without any effort, like a fruit falling when it is ripe.We speak of things which are now shameful, and although we try, as well as we are able, to conceive them as they were before they became shameful, yet necessity compels us rather to limit our discussion to the bounds set by modesty than to extend it as our moderate faculty of discourse might suggest. For since that which I have been speaking of was not experienced even by those who might have experienced it, —I mean our first parents (for sin and its merited banishment from Paradise anticipated this passionless generation on their part), —when sexual intercourse is spoken of now, it suggests to men’s thoughts not such a placid obedience to the will as is conceivable in our first parents, but such violent acting of lust as they themselves have experienced. And therefore modesty shuts my mouth, although my mind conceives the matter clearly.(…)4. APPENDIX 2English “droll” = 1° <noun> jester, buffoon, clown ; 2° <adjective> farcical ***Dutch “drol” = <noun> anything compact and coiled, twirled out1° short, thick mannikin —> jester, buffoon, clown ;(=15th c. French ‘drolle’→ modern French adjective ‘drôle’ : funny)2° a turd, cow PIE → pastry : a cow TART ;expression “~een drol draaien” literally : to turn out a turd .Dutch “drollig” = <adjective > farcical.Above : a yummy cow TART squirted out of a cream spuit nozzle,metaphorically derived from a yucky cow PIE,but iconically closer to a ‘dog TURD’…Above : ‘ farcir une saucisse’ = French for ‘to stuff a sausage’From ‘farce’ to ‘droll’ to ‘farce’, thus I must needs end this my modern attempt at rambling Quora ‘marginal writing’, by closing the circle : recycling and refilling the bowels that had been emptied before.*** farce <noun> in The Online Etymology Dictionary :late 14c., "force-meat, stuffing;" 1520s, in the dramatic sense "ludicrous satire; low comedy," from Middle French farce = "comic interlude in a mystery play" (16c.), literally "stuffing," from Old French farcir "to stuff," (13c.), from Latin farcire "to stuff, cram," which is of uncertain origin, perhaps from PIE (Proto-Indo-European language) *bhrekw- "to cram together," and thus related to frequens "crowded."... for a farce is that in poetry which grotesque(!) is in a picture. The persons and action of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false, that is, inconsistent with the characters of mankind. [Dryden, "A Parallel of Poetry and Painting"]According to OED and other sources, the pseudo-Latin farsia was applied 13c. in France and England to praise phrases inserted into liturgical formulae (for example between kyrie and eleison) at the principal festivals, then in Old French farce was extended to the impromptu buffoonery among actors that was a feature of religious stage plays. Generalized sense of "a ridiculous sham" is from 1690s in English.-©©NeD

1989: Tim Berners-Lee invents the Web with HTML as its publishing language:-The World Wide Web began life in the place where you would least expect it: at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland. CERN is a meeting place for physicists from all over the world, where highly abstract and conceptual thinkers engage in the contemplation of complex atomic phenomena that occur on a minuscule scale in time and space. This is a surprising place indeed for the beginnings of a technology which would, eventually, deliver everything from tourist information, online shopping and advertisements, financial data, weather forecasts and much more to your personal computer.Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the Web. In 1989, Tim was working in a computing services section of CERN when he came up with the concept; at the time he had no idea that it would be implemented on such an enormous scale. Particle physics research often involves collaboration among institutes from all over the world. Tim had the idea of enabling researchers from remote sites in the world to organize and pool together information. But far from simply making available a large number of research documents as files that could be downloaded to individual computers, he suggested that you could actually link the text in the files themselves.In other words, there could be cross-references from one research paper to another. This would mean that while reading one research paper, you could quickly display part of another paper that holds directly relevant text or diagrams. Documentation of a scientific and mathematical nature would thus be represented as a `web' of information held in electronic form on computers across the world. This, Tim thought, could be done by using some form of hypertext, some way of linking documents together by using buttons on the screen, which you simply clicked on to jump from one paper to another. Before coming to CERN, Tim had already worked on document production and text processing, and had developed his first hypertext system, `Enquire', in 1980 for his own personal use.Tim's prototype Web browser on the NeXT computer came out in 1990.Through 1990: The time was ripe for Tim's inventionThe fact that the Web was invented in the early 1990s was no coincidence. Developments in communications technology during that time meant that, sooner or later, something like the Web was bound to happen. For a start, hypertext was coming into vogue and being used on computers. Also, Internet users were gaining in the number of users on the system: there was an increasing audience for distributed information. Last, but not least, the new domain name system had made it much easier to address a machine on the Internet.Hypertextlthough already established as a concept by academics as early as the 1940s, it was with the advent of the personal computer that hypertext came out of the cupboard. In the late 1980s, Bill Atkinson, an exceptionally gifted programmer working for Apple Computer Inc., came up with an application called Hypercard for the Macintosh. Hypercard enabled you to construct a series of on-screen `filing cards' that contained textual and graphical information. Users could navigate these by pressing on-screen buttons, taking themselves on a tour of the information in the process.Hypercard set the scene for more applications based on the filing card idea. Toolbook for the PC was used in the early 1990s for constructing hypertext training courses that had `pages' with buttons which could go forward or backward or jump to a new topic. Behind the scenes, buttons would initiate little programs called scripts. These scripts would control which page would be presented next; they could even run a small piece of animation on the screen. The application entitled Guide was a similar application for UNIX and the PC.Hypercard and its imitators caught the popular imagination. However, these packages still had one major limitation: hypertext jumps could only be made to files on the same computer. Jumps made to computers on the other side of the world were still out of the question. Nobody yet had implemented a system involving hypertext links on a global scale.The domain name systemBy the middle 1980s, the Internet had a new, easy-to-use system for naming computers. This involved using the idea of the domain name. A domain name comprises a series of letters separated by dots, for example: `.' or `Welcome to the Erb Zone!'. These names are the easy-to-use alternative to the much less manageable and cumbersome IP address numbers.A program called Distributed Name Service (DNS) maps domain names onto IP addresses, keeping the IP addresses `hidden'. DNS was an absolute breakthrough in making the Internet accessible to those who were not computer nerds. As a result of its introduction, email addresses became simpler. Previous to DNS, email addresses had all sorts of hideous codes such as exclamation marks, percent signs and other extraneous information to specify the route to the other machine.Choosing the right approach to create a global hypertext systemTo Tim Berners-Lee, global hypertext links seemed feasible, but it was a matter of finding the correct approach to implementing them. Using an existing hypertext package might seem an attractive proposition, but this was impractical for a number of reasons. To start with, any hypertext tool to be used worldwide would have to take into account that many types of computers existed that were linked to the Internet: Personal Computers, Macintoshes, UNIX machines and simple terminals. Also, many desktop publishing methods were in vogue: SGML, Interleaf, LaTex, Microsoft Word, and Troff among many others. Commercial hypertext packages were computer-specific and could not easily take text from other sources; besides, they were far too complicated and involved tedious compiling of text into internal formats to create the final hypertext system.What was needed was something very simple, at least in the beginning. Tim demonstrated a basic, but attractive way of publishing text by developing some software himself, and also his own simple protocol - HTTP - for retrieving other documents' text via hypertext links. Tim's own protocol, HTTP, stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. The text format for HTTP was named HTML, for HyperText Mark-up Language; Tim's hypertext implementation was demonstrated on a NeXT workstation, which provided many of the tools he needed to develop his first prototype. By keeping things very simple, Tim encouraged others to build upon his ideas and to design further software for displaying HTML, and for setting up their own HTML documents ready for access.Tim bases his HTML on an existing internationally agreed upon method of text mark-upThe HTML that Tim invented was strongly based on SGML (Standard Generalized Mark-up Language), an internationally agreed upon method for marking up text into structural units such as paragraphs, headings, list items and so on. SGML could be implemented on any machine. The idea was that the language was independent of the formatter (the browser or other viewing software) which actually displayed the text on the screen. The use of pairs of tags such as<TITLE>and</TITLE>is taken directly from SGML, which does exactly the same. The SGML elements used in Tim's HTML includedP(paragraph);H1throughH6(heading level 1 through heading level 6);OL(ordered lists);UL(unordered lists);LI(list items) and various others. What SGML does not include, of course, are hypertext links: the idea of using the anchor element with the HREF attribute was purely Tim's invention, as was the now-famous `http://www.name.name' format for addressing machines on the Web.Basing HTML on SGML was a brilliant idea: other people would have invented their own language from scratch but this might have been much less reliable, as well as less acceptable to the rest of the Internet community. Certainly the simplicity of HTML, and the use of the anchor elementAfor creating hypertext links, was what made Tim's invention so useful.September 1991: Open discussion about HTML across the Internet beginsFar from keeping his ideas private, Tim made every attempt to discuss them openly online across the Internet. Coming from a research background, this was quite a natural thing to do. In September 1991, the WWW-talk mailing list was started, a kind of electronic discussion group in which enthusiasts could exchange ideas and gossip. By 1992, a handful of other academics and computer researchers were showing interest. Dave Raggett from Hewlett-Packard's Labs in Bristol, England, was one of these early enthusiasts, and, following electronic discussion, Dave visited Tim in 1992.Here, in Tim's tiny room in the bowels of the sprawling buildings of CERN, the two engineers further considered how HTML might be taken from its current beginnings and shaped into something more appropriate for mass consumption. Trying to anticipate the kind of features that users really would like, Dave looked through magazines, newspapers and other printed media to get an idea of what sort of HTML features would be important when that same information was published online. Upon return to England, Dave sat down at his keyboard and resolutely composed HTML+, a richer version of the original HTML.Late 1992: NCSA is intrigued by the idea of the WebMeanwhile on the other side of the world, Tim's ideas had caught the eye of Joseph Hardin and Dave Thompson, both of the National Center for Supercomputer Applications, a research institute at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. They managed to connect to the computer at CERN and download copies of two free Web browsers. Realizing the importance of what they saw, NCSA decided to develop a browser of their own to be called Mosaic. Among the programmers in the NCSA team were Marc Andreessen - who later made his millions by selling Web products - and the brilliant programmer Eric Bina - who also became rich, courtesy of the Web. Eric Bina was a kind of software genius who reputedly could stay up three nights in succession, typing in a reverie of hacking at his computer.December 1992: Marc Andreessen makes a brief appearance on WWW- talkEarly Web enthusiasts exchanged ideas and gossip over an electronic discussion group called WWW-talk. This was where Dave Raggett, Tim Berners-Lee, Dan Connolly and others debated how images (photographs, diagrams, illustrations and so on) should be inserted into HTML documents. Not everyone agreed upon the way that the relevant tag should be implemented, or even what that tag should be called. Suddenly, Marc Andreessen appeared on WWW-talk and, without further to-do, introduced an idea for theIMGtag by the Mosaic team.It was quite plain that the others were not altogether keen on the design ofIMG, but Andreessen was not easily redirected. TheIMGtag was implemented in the form suggested by the Mosaic team on its browser and remains to this day firmly implanted in HTML. This was much to the chagrin of supporters back in academia who invented several alternatives toIMGin the years to come. Now, with the coming of HTML 4, theOBJECTtag potentially replacesIMG, but this is, of course, some years later.March 1993: Lou Montulli releases the Lynx browser version 2.0aLou Montulli was one of the first people to write a text-based browser, Lynx. The Lynx browser was a text-based browser for terminals and for computers that used DOS without Windows. Lou Montulli was later recruited to work with Netscape Communications Corp., but nonetheless remained partially loyal to the idea of developing HTML as an open standard, proving a real asset to the HTML working group and the HTML Editorial Board in years to come. Lou's enthusiasm for good, expensive wine, and his knowledge of excellent restaurants in the Silicon Valley area were to make the standardization of HTML a much more pleasurable process.Early 1993: Dave Raggett begins to write his own browserWhile Eric Bina and the NCSA Mosaic gang were hard at it hacking through the night, Dave Raggett of Hewlett-Packard Labs in Bristol was working part-time on his Arena browser, on which he hoped to demonstrate all sorts of newly invented features for HTML.April 1993: The Mosaic browser is releasedIn April 1993, version 1 of the Mosaic browser was released for Sun Microsystems Inc.'s workstation, a computer used in software development running the UNIX operating system. Mosaic extended the features specified by Tim Berners-Lee; for example, it added images, nested lists and fill-out forms. Academics and software engineers later would argue that many of these extensions were very much ad hoc and not properly designed.Late 1993: Large companies underestimate the importance of the WebDave Raggett's work on the Arena browser was slow because he had to develop much of it single-handedly: no money was available to pay for a team of developers. This was because Hewlett-Packard, in common with many other large computer companies, was quite unconvinced that the Internet would be a success; indeed, the need for a global hypertext system simply passed them by. For many large corporations, the question of whether or not any money could be made from the Web was unclear from the outset.There was also a misconception that the Internet was mostly for academics. In some companies, senior management was assured that the telephone companies would provide the technology for global communications of this sort, anyway. The result was that individuals working in research labs in the commercial sector were unable to devote much time to Web development. This was a bitter disappointment to some researchers, who gratefully would have committed nearly every waking moment toward shaping what they envisioned would be the communications system of the future.Dave Raggett, realizing that there were not enough working hours left for him to succeed at what he felt was an immensely important task, continued writing his browser at home. There he would sit at a large computer that occupied a fair portion of the dining room table, sharing its slightly sticky surface with paper, crayons, Lego bricks and bits of half-eaten cookies left by the children. Dave also used the browser to show text flow around images, forms and other aspects of HTML at the First WWW Conference in Geneva in 1994. The Arena browser was later used for development work at CERN.May 1994: NCSA assigns commercial rights for Mosaic browser to Spyglass, Inc.In May 1994, Spyglass, Inc. signed a multi-million dollar licensing agreement with NCSA to distribute a commercially enhanced version of Mosaic. In August of that same year, the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, the home of NCSA, assigned all future commercial rights for NCSA Mosaic to Spyglass.May 1994: The first World Wide Web conference is held in Geneva, with HTML+ on showAlthough Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark had commercial interests in mind, the rest of the World Wide Web community had quite a different attitude: they saw themselves as joint creators of a wonderful new technology, which certainly would benefit the world. They were jiggling with excitement. Even quiet and retiring academics became animated in discussion, and many seemed evangelical about their new-found god of the Web.At the first World Wide Web conference organized by CERN in May 1994, all was merry with 380 attendees - who mostly were from Europe but also included many from the United States. You might have thought that Marc Andreessen, Jim Clark and Eric Bina surely would be there, but they were not. For the most part, participants were from the academic community, from institutions such as the World Meteorological Organization, the International Center for Theoretical Physics, the University of Iceland and so on. Later conferences had much more of a commercial feel, but this one was for technical enthusiasts who instinctively knew that this was the start of something big.At the World Wide Web conference in Geneva. Left to right: Joseph Hardin from NCSA, Robert Cailliau from CERN, Tim Berners-Lee from CERN and Dan Connolly (of HTML 2 fame) then working for Hal software.During the course of that week, awards were presented for notable achievements on the Web; these awards were given to Marc Andreessen, Lou Montulli, Eric Bina, Rob Hartill and Kevin Hughes. Dan Connolly, who proceeded to define HTML 2, gave a slide presentation entitled Interoperability: Why Everyone Wins, which explained why it was important that the Web operated with a proper HTML specification. Strange to think that at least three of the people who received awards at the conference were later to fly in the face of Dan's idea that adopting a cross-company uniform standard for HTML was essential.Dave Raggett had been working on some new HTML ideas, which he called HTML+. At the conference it was agreed that the work on HTML+ should be carried forward to lead to the development of an HTML 3 standard. Dave Raggett, together with CERN, developed Arena further as a proof-of-concept browser for this work. Using Arena, Dave Raggett, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, Håkon Lie and others demonstrated text flow around a figure with captions, resizable tables, image backgrounds, math and other features.A panel discussion at the Geneva conference. Kevin Altis from Intel, Dave Raggett from HP Labs, Rick `Channing' Rodgers from the National Library of Medicine.The conference ended with a glorious evening cruise on board a paddle steamer around Lake Geneva with Wolfgang and the Werewolves providing Jazz accompaniment.September 1994: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) sets up an HTML working groupIn early 1994, an Internet Engineering Task Force working group was set up to deal with HTML.he Internet Engineering Task Force is the international standards and development body of the Internet and is a large, open community of network designers, operators, vendors and researchers concerned with the evolution and smooth operation of the Internet architecture. The technical work of the IETF is done in working groups, which are organized by topic into several areas; for example, security, network routing, and applications. The IETF is, in general, part of a culture that sees the Internet as belonging to The People. This was even more so in the early days of the Web.he feelings of the good `ole days of early Web development are captured in the song, The Net Flag, which can be found `somewhere on the Internet'. The first verse runs as follows:The people's web is deepest red,And oft it's killed our routers dead.But ere the bugs grew ten days old,The patches fixed the broken code.Chorus:So raise the open standard highWithin its codes we'll live or dieThough cowards flinch and Bill Gates sneersWe'll keep the net flag flying here.In keeping with normal IETF practices, the HTML working group was open to anyone in the engineering community: any interested computer scientist could potentially become a member and, once on its mailing list, could take part in email debate. The HTML working group met approximately three times a year, during which time they would enjoy a good haggle about HTML features present and future, be pleasantly suffused with coffee and beer, striding about plush hotel lobbies sporting pony tails, T-shirts and jeans without the slightest care.July 1994: HTML specification for HTML 2 is releasedDuring 1993 and early 1994, lots of browsers had added their own bits to HTML; the language was becoming ill-defined. In an effort to make sense of the chaos, Dan Connolly and colleagues collected all the HTML tags that were widely used and collated them into a draft document that defined the breadth of what Tim Berners-Lee called HTML 2. The draft was then circulated through the Internet community for comment. With the patience of a saint, Dan took into account numerous suggestions from HTML enthusiasts far and wide, ensuring that all would be happy with the eventual HTML 2 definition. He also wrote a Document Type Definition for HTML 2, a kind of mathematically precise description of the language.November 1994: Netscape is formedDuring 1993, Marc Andreessen apparently felt increasingly irritated at simply being on the Mosaic project rather than in charge of it. Upon graduating, he decided to leave NCSA and head for California where he met Jim Clark, who was already well known in Silicon Valley and who had money to invest. Together they formed Mosaic Communications, which then became Netscape Communications Corp. in November, 1994. What they planned to do was create and market their very own browser.The browser they designed was immensely successful - so much so in fact, that for some time to come, many users would mistakenly think that Netscape invented the Web. Netscape did its best to make sure that even those who were relying on a low-bandwidth connection - that is, even those who only had a modem-link from a home personal computer - were able to access the Web effectively. This was greatly to the company's credit.Following a predictable path, Netscape began inventing its own HTML tags as it pleased without first openly discussing them with the Web community. Netscape rarely made an appearance at the big International WWW conferences, but it seemed to be driving the HTML standard. It was a curious situation, and one that the inner core of the HTML community felt they must redress.Late 1994: The World Wide Web Consortium formsThe World Wide Web Consortium was formed in late 1994 to fulfill the potential of the Web through the development of open standards. They had a strong interest in HTML. Just as an orchestra insists on the best musicians, so the consortium recruited many of the best-known names in the Web community. Headed up by Tim Berners-Lee, here are just some of the players in the band today (1997):Members of the World Wide Web Consortium at the MIT site. From left to right are Henrick Frystyk Neilsen, Anselm Baird-Smith, Jay Sekora, Rohit Khare, Dan Connolly, Jim Gettys, Tim Berners-Lee, Susan Hardy, Jim Miller, Dave Raggett, Tom Greene, Arthur Secret, Karen MacArthur.Dave Raggett on HTML; from the United Kingdom.Arnaud le Hors on HTML; from France.Dan Connolly on HTML; from the United States.Henrik Frystyk Nielsen on HTTP and on enabling the Web to go faster; from Denmark.Håkon Lie on style sheets; from Norway. He is located in France, working at INRIA.Bert Bos on style sheets and layout; from the Netherlands.Jim Miller on investigating technologies that could be used in rating the content of Web pages; from the United States.Chris Lilley on style sheets and font support; from the United Kingdom.The W3 Consortium is based in part at the Laboratory of Computer Science at Massachusetts' Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States; and in part at INRIA, the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique, a French governmental research institute. The W3 Consortium is also located in part at Keio University in Japan. You can look at the Consortium's Web pages on `World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)'.The consortium is sponsored by a number of companies that directly benefit from its work on standards and other technology for the Web. The member companies include Digital Equipment Corp.; Hewlett-Packard Co.; IBM Corp.; Microsoft Corp.; Netscape Communications Corp.; and Sun Microsystems Inc., among many others.Through 1995: HTML is extended with many new tagsDuring 1995, all kinds of new HTML tags emerged. Some, like theBGCOLORattribute of theBODYelement andFONT FACE, which control stylistic aspects of a document, found themselves in the black books of the academic engineering community. `You're not supposed to be able to do things like that in HTML,' they would protest. It was their belief that such things as text color, background texture, font size and font face were definitely outside the scope of a language when their only intent was to specify how a document would be organized.March 1995: HTML 3 is published as an Internet DraftDave Raggett had been working for some time on his new ideas for HTML, and at last he formalized them in a document published as an Internet Draft in March, 1995. All manner of HTML features were covered. A new tag for inserting images calledFIGwas introduced, which Dave hoped would supersedeIMG, as well as a whole gambit of features for marking up math and scientific documents. Dave dealt with HTML tables and tabs, footnotes and forms. He also added support for style sheets by including aSTYLEtag and aCLASSattribute. The latter was to be available on every element to encourage authors to give HTML elements styles, much as you do in desktop publishing.Although the HTML 3 draft was very well received, it was somewhat difficult to get it ratified by the IETF. The belief was that the draft was too large and too full of new proposals. To get consensus on a draft 150 pages long and about which everyone wanted to voice an opinion was optimistic - to say the least. In the end, Dave and the inner circle of the HTML community decided to call it a day.Of course, browser writers were very keen on supporting HTML 3 - in theory. Inevitably, each browser writer chose to implement a different subset of HTML 3's features as they were so inclined, and then proudly proclaimed to support the standard. The confusion was mind-boggling, especially as browsers even came out with extensions to HTML 3, implying to the ordinary gent that normal HTML 3 was, of course, already supported. Was there an official HTML 3 standard or not? The truth was that there was not, but reading the computer press you might never have known the difference.March 1995: A furor over the HTML Tables specificationDave Raggett's HTML 3 draft had tackled the tabular organization of information in HTML. Arguments over this aspect of the language had continued for some time, but now it was time to really get going. At the 32nd meeting of the IETF in Danvers, Massachusetts, Dave found a group from the SGML brethren who were up in arms over part of the tables specification because it contradicted the CALS table model. Groups such as the US Navy use the CALS table model in complex documentation. After long negotiation, Dave managed to placate the CALS table delegates and altered the draft to suit their needs. HTML tables, which were not in HTML originally, finally surfaced from the HTML 3 draft to appear in HTML 3.2. They continue to be used extensively for the purpose of providing a layout grid for organizing pictures and text on the screen.August 1995: Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser comes outVersion 1.0 of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser was announced. This browser was eventually to compete with Netscape's browser, and to evolve its own HTML features. To a certain extent, Microsoft built its business on the Web by extending HTML features. The ActiveX feature made Microsoft's browser unique, and Netscape developed a plug-in called Ncompass to handle ActiveX. This whole idea whereby one browser experiments with an extension to HTML only to find others adding support to keep even, continues to the present.In November 1995, Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 2.0 arrived for its Windows NT and Windows 95 operating systems.September 1995: Netscape submits a proposal for framesBy this time, Netscape submitted a proposal for frames, which involved the screen being divided into independent, scrollable areas. The proposal was implemented on Netscape's Navigator browser before anyone really had time to comment on it, but nobody was surprised.November 1995: The HTML working group runs into problemsThe HTML working group was an excellent idea in theory, but in practice things did not go quite as expected. With the immense popularity of the Web, the HTML working group grew larger and larger, and the volume of associated email soared exponentially. Imagine one hundred people trying to design a house. `I want the windows to be double-glazed,' says one. `Yes, but shouldn't we make them smaller, while we're at it,' questions another. Still others chime in: `What material do you propose for the frames - I'm not having them in plastic, that's for sure'; `I suggest that we don't have windows, as such, but include small, circular port-holes on the Southern elevation...' and so on.You get the idea. The HTML working group emailed each other in a frenzy of electronic activity. In the end, its members became so snowed under with email that no time was left for programming. For software engineers, this was a sorry state of affairs, indeed: `I came back after just three days away to find over 2000 messages waiting,' was the unhappy lament of the HTML enthusiast.Anyway, the HTML working group still was losing ground to the browser vendors. The group was notably slow in coming to a consensus on a given HTML feature, and commercial organizations were hardly going to sit around having tea, pleasantly conversing on the weather whilst waiting for the results of debates. And they did not.November 1995: Vendors unite to form a new group dedicated to developing an HTML standardIn November, 1995 Dave Raggett called together representatives of the browser companies and suggested they meet as a small group dedicated to standardizing HTML. Imagine his surprise when it worked! Lou Montulli from Netscape, Charlie Kindel from Microsoft, Eric Sink from Spyglass, Wayne Gramlich from Sun Microsystems, Dave Raggett, Tim Berners-Lee and Dan Connolly from the W3 Consortium, and Jonathan Hirschman from Pathfinder convened near Chicago and made quick and effective decisions about HTML.November 1995: Style sheets for HTML documents begin to take shapeBert Bos, Håkon Lie, Dave Raggett, Chris Lilley and others from the World Wide Web Consortium and others met in Versailles near Paris to discuss the deployment of Cascading Style Sheets. The name Cascading Style Sheets implies that more than one style sheet can interact to produce the final look of the document. Using a special language, the CSS group advocated that everyone would soon be able to write simple styles for HTML, as one would do in Microsoft Word and other desktop publishing software packages. The SGML contingent, who preferred a LISP-like language called DSSSL - it rhymes with whistle - seemed out of the race when Microsoft promised to implement CSS on its Internet Explorer browser.November 1995: Internationalization of HTML Internet DraftGavin Nicol, Gavin Adams and others presented a long paper on the internationalization of the Web. Their idea was to extend the capabilities of HTML 2, primarily by removing the restriction on the character set used. This would mean that HTML could be used to mark up languages other than those that use the Latin-1 character set to include a wider variety of alphabets and character sets, such as those that read from right to left.December 1995: The HTML working group is dismantledSince the IETF HTML working group was having difficulties coming to consensus swiftly enough to cope with such a fast-evolving standard, it was eventually dismantled.February 1996: The HTML ERB is formedFollowing the success of the November, 1995 meeting, the World Wide Web Consortium formed the HTML Editorial Review Board to help with the standardization process. This board consisted of representatives from IBM, Microsoft, Netscape, Novell, Softquad and the W3 Consortium, and did its business via telephone conference and email exchanges, meeting approximately once every three months. Its aim was to collaborate and agree upon a common standard for HTML, thus putting an end to the era when browsers each implemented a different subset of the language. The bad fairy of incompatibility was to be banished from the HTML kingdom forever, or one could hope so, perhaps.Dan Connolly of the W3 Consortium, also author of HTML 2, deftly accomplished the feat of chairing what could be quite a raucous meeting of the clans. Dan managed to make sure that all representatives had their say and listened to each other's point of view in an orderly manner. A strong chair was absolutely essential in these meetings.In preparation for an ERB meeting, specifications describing new aspects of HTML were made electronically available for ERB members to read. Then, at the meeting itself, the proponent explained some of the rationale behind the specification, and then dearly hoped that all who were present also concurred that the encapsulated ideas were sound. Questions such as, `should a particular feature be included, or should we kick it out,' would be considered. Each representative would air his point of view. If all went well, the specification might eventually see daylight and become a standard. At the time of writing, the next HTML standard, code-named Cougar, has begun its long journey in this direction.TheBLINKtag was ousted in an HTML ERB meeting. Netscape would only abolish it if Microsoft agreed to get rid ofMARQUEE; the deal was struck and both tags disappeared. Both of these extensions have always been considered slightly goofy by all parties. Many tough decisions were to be made about theOBJECTspecification. Out of a chaos of several different tags -EMBED,APP,APPLET,DYNSRCand so on - all associated with embedding different types of information in HTML documents, a singleOBJECTtag was chosen in April, 1996. ThisOBJECTtag becomes part of the HTML standard, but not until 1997.April 1996: The W3 Consortium working draft on Scripting comes outBased on an initial draft by Charlie Kindel, and, in turn, derived from Netscape's extensions for JavaScript, a W3C working draft on the subject of Scripting was written by Dave Raggett. In one form or another, this draft should eventually become part of standard HTML.July 1996: Microsoft seems more interested than first imagined in open standardsIn April 1996, Microsoft's Internet Explorer became available for Macintosh and Windows 3.1 systems.Thomas Reardon had been excited by the Web even at the second WWW conference held in Darmstadt, Germany in 1995. One year later, he seemed very interested in the standardization process and apparently wanted Microsoft to do things the right way with the W3C and with the IETF. Traditionally, developers are somewhat disparaging about Microsoft, so this was an interesting turn of events. It should be said that Microsoft did, of course, invent tags of their own, just as did Netscape. These included the remarkableMARQUEEtag that caused great mirth among the more academic HTML community. TheMARQUEEtag made text dance about all over the screen - not exactly a feature you would expect from a serious language concerned with structural mark-up such as paragraphs, headings and lists.The worry that a massive introduction of proprietary products would kill the Web continued. Netscape acknowledged that vendors needed to push ahead of the standards process and innovate. They pointed out that, if users like a particular Netscape innovation, then the market would drive it to become a de facto standard. This seemed quite true at the time and, indeed, Netscape has innovated on top of that standard again. It's precisely this sequence of events that Dave Raggett and the World Wide Web Consortium were trying to avoid.December 1996: Work on `Cougar' is begunThe HTML ERB became the HTML Working Group and began to work on `Cougar', the next version of HTML with completion late Spring, 1997, eventually to become HTML 4. With all sorts of innovations for the disabled and support for international languages, as well as providing style sheet support, extensions to forms, scripting and much more, HTML 4 breaks away from the simplicity and charm of HTML of earlier years!Dave Raggett, co-editor of the HTML 4 specification, at work composing at the keyboard at his home in Boston.January 1997: HTML 3.2 is readySuccess! In January 1997, the W3 Consortium formally endorsed HTML 3.2 as an HTML cross-industry specification. HTML 3.2 had been reviewed by all member organizations, including major browser vendors such as Netscape and Microsoft. This meant that the specification was now stable and approved of by most Web players. By providing a neutral forum, the W3 Consortium had successfully obtained agreement upon a standard version of HTML. There was great rejoicing, indeed. HTML 3.2 took the existing IETF HTML 2 standard and incorporated features from HTML+ and HTML 3. HTML 3.2 included tables, applets, text flow around images, subscripts and superscripts.One might well ask why HTML 3.2 was called HTML 3.2 and not, let's say, HTML 3.1 or HTML 3.5. The version number is open to discussion just as much as is any other aspect of HTML. The version number is often one of the last details to be decided.UpdateSpring 1998: Cougar has now fully materialized as HTML 4.0 and is a W3C Proposed Recommendation. But do the major browsers implement HTML 4.0, you wonder? As usual in the computer industry, there is no simple answer. Certainly things are heading in that direction. Neither Netscape's or Microsofts browser completely implements style sheets in the way specified, which is a pity, but no doubt they will make amends. There are a number of pecularities in the way that OBJECT works but we very much hope that this will also eventually be implemented in a more consistent manner.