W3C WD-object-960325

Inserting objects into HTML

W3C Working Draft 25-Mar-96

This version:
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-object-960325.html
Latest version:
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-object.html
Editor:
Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org>
Authors:
Charlie Kindel, Microsoft Corporation
Lou Montulli, Netscape Communications Corp.
Eric Sink, Spyglass Inc.
Wayne Gramlich, Sun Microsystems
Jonathan Hirschman, Pathfinder
Tim Berners-Lee, W3C
Dan Connolly, W3C

Status of this document

This is a W3C Working Draft for review by W3C members and other interested parties. It is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use W3C Working Drafts as reference material or to cite them as other than "work in progress". A list of current W3C working drafts can be found at: http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR

Note: since working drafts are subject to frequent change, you are advised to reference the above URL, rather than the URLs for working drafts themselves.

Abstract

The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a simple markup language used to create hypertext documents that are portable from one platform to another. HTML documents are SGML documents with generic semantics that are appropriate for representing information from a wide range of applications. This specification extends HTML to support the insertion of multimedia objects including Java applets, Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) objects (e.g. OLE Controls and OLE Document embeddings), and a wide range of other media plug-ins. The approach allows objects to be specified in a general manner and provides the ability to override the default implementation of objects.

Previous Work

Previously this draft was known as the "INSERT" draft. However, on 13-Feb-96 the authors decided, with input from various parties, to rename the elements defined by the specification. Thus the document was renamed from WD-insert to WD-object.


Contents


Introduction

HTML 2.0 defined only a single mechanism for inserting media into HTML documents: the IMG tag. While this tag has certainly proved worthwhile, the fact that it is restricted to image media severely limits it usefulness as richer and richer media finds its way onto the Web.

Developers have been experimenting with ideas for dealing with new media: Microsoft's DYNSRC attribute for video and audio, Netscape's EMBED tag for compound document embedding, and Sun's APP and APPLET tags for executable code.

Each of these proposed solutions attacks the problem from a slightly different perspective, and on the surface are each very different. In addition, each of these proposals falls short, in one way or another, of meeting the requirements of the Web community as a whole. However, we believe that this problem can be addressed with a single extension that addresses all of the current needs, and is fully extensible for the future.

This specification defines a new tag <OBJECT> which subsumes the role of the IMG tag, and provides a general solution for dealing with new media, while providing for effective backwards compatibility with existing browsers. OBJECT allows the HTML author to specify the data, and/or properties/parameters for initializing objects to be inserted into HTML documents, as well as the code that can be used to display/manipulate that data. Here, the term object is used to describe the things that people want to place in HTML documents, but other terms for these things are: components, applets, plug-ins, media handlers, etc.

The data can be specified in one of several ways: a file specified by a URL, in-line data, or as a set of named properties. In addition, there are a number of attributes that allow authors to specify standard properties such as width, and height. The code for the object is specified in several ways: by an explicit reference, or indirectly by the object's "class name" or media type.

This specification covers the syntax and semantics for inserting such objects into HTML documents, but leaves out the architectural and application programming interface issues for how objects communicate with the document and other objects on the same page. It is anticipated that future specifications will cover these topics, including scripting languages and interfaces.


An introduction to the OBJECT tag

This section is intended to help readers get the feel of the insertion mechanism, and is not a normative part of the specification. The OBJECT tag provides a richer alternative to the IMG tag. It may be used when the author wishes to provide an alternative for user agents that don't support a particular media. A simple example of using OBJECT is:

    <OBJECT data=TheEarth.avi type="application/avi">
    <img src=TheEarth.gif alt="The Earth">
    </OBJECT>

Here the user agent would show an animation if it supports the AVI format, otherwise it would show a GIF image. The IMG element is used for the latter as it provides for backwards compatibility with existing browsers. The TYPE attribute allows the user agent to quickly detect that it doesn't support a particular object, and avoid wasting time downloading it. Another motivation for using the TYPE attribute is when the object is loaded off a local drive, as it allows the format to be specified directly rather than being inferred from the file extension.

The next example inserts an applet written in the Python lanuage that displays a (rather large) analog clock. The CODE attribute gives a URL for the Python code implementing the applet. The PARAM element is used to pass named parameters to objects. Without <PARAM NAME=size VALUE=40>, the clock will measure only 200 pixels.

    <OBJECT
       type="application/x-oleobject"
       code="http://monty.cnri.reston.va.us/grail/demo/clocks/analgclock.py"
    >
    <PARAM NAME=size VALUE=40>
    fall back ...
    </OBJECT>

The following example is a Java applet. The CODE attribute uses URL with the java: scheme to identify the Java class and entry point. The CODEBASE attribute is a URL informing the Java class loader where to find the compressed archive file containing an implementation for this class.

    <OBJECT
       code="java:myapplet/main"
       codebase="http://java.acme.com/applets/cool.jar"
       width=400
       height=75
    >
    fall back ...
    </OBJECT>

The other attributes on the OBJECT element define rendering properties of the container for the applet viewer.

Here is another clock, but this time using an OLE control:

    <OBJECT
       id=clock1
       type="application/x-oleobject"
       code="clsid:{663C8FEF-1EF9-11CF-A3DB-080036F12502}"
       data="http://www.acme.com/ole/clock.stm"
    >
    fall back ...
    </OBJECT>

This uses the clsid: scheme to specify the OLE class identifier. The ID attribute allows other controls on the same page to locate the clock. The DATA attribute points to data used to initialize the object's state. Note that OLE data streams include a class identifier that can be used by the OLE loader to find an implementation in the absence of the CODE attribute. The CODEBASE attribute can be used to give a URL as a hint to the OLE loader on where to find an implementation for this class.

For speedy loading of objects you can inline the object's state data using the URL data: scheme [Ref 9], e.g.

    <OBJECT
       id=clock1
       code="clsid:{663C8FEF-1EF9-11CF-A3DB-080036F12502}"
       data="data:application/x-oleobject;base64, ...base64 data..."
    >
    fall back...
    </OBJECT>

Inline data is only recommended for small amounts of data.


A walk through the DTD

The document type definition provides the formal definition of the allowed syntax for HTML inserts. The following is an annotated listing of the DTD defining the semantics of the elements and their attributes. The complete listing appears at the end of this document.

Standard Units for Lengths

Length values can be specified as an integer representing the number of screen pixels, or as a percentage of the current displayable region, e.g. "50%", for widths, this is the space between the current left and right margins, while for heights, this is the height of the current window or table cell etc.

You can also use fixed units by including a suffix after a floating point number, e.g. "0.5in". The allowed suffices are: pt for points, pi for picas, in for inches, and cm for centimeters, where 72pt = 6pi = 1in = 2.54cm.


The OBJECT Tag

The OBJECT element is used to insert an object into an HTML document. It requires both start and end tags. The OBJECT element has the same content model as the HTML BODY element, except that one or more optional PARAM elements can be placed immediately after the OBJECT start tag and used to initialize the inserted object. The content of the OBJECT element is rendered if the object specified by the data, code or classid attributes can't be rendered (user agents may choose to display the content of the OBJECT element if displaying the actual element will take a long time to render). This provides for backwards compatibility with existing browsers, and allows authors to specify alternative media via nested OBJECT elements.

Note that this doesn't provide the same level of flexibility as would be provided by a richer description of resource variants. For instance when a resource in available are several media types and for each such type in English, Spanish, French and German.

<!-- Content model entities imported from parent DTD:
  %body.content allows objects to contain headers, paras,
  lists, form elements *and* arbitrarily nested objects.
-->
<!ENTITY % attrs -- ID plus additional attributes from parent DTD --
       "id  ID  #IMPLIED  -- element identifier --"
        >
        
<!ENTITY % URL "CDATA" -- uniform resource locator -->

<!ENTITY % Align "(texttop|middle|textmiddle|baseline|
                            textbottom|left|center|right)">

<!ENTITY % Length "CDATA" -- standard length value -->
<!ENTITY % Shapes "(rect|circle|poly)">
<!ENTITY % Coords "CDATA" -- shape dependent -- >

<!-- OBJECT is a character-like element for inserting objects -->
<!ELEMENT object - - (param*, bodytext)>
<!ATTLIST object
        %attrs      -- id, class, style, lang, dir --
        declare (declare) #IMPLIED  -- declare but don't instantiate flag --
        classid %URL     #IMPLIED   -- object class identifier --
        code    %URL     #IMPLIED   -- reference to object's code --
        data    %URL     #IMPLIED   -- reference to object's data --
        type    CDATA    #IMPLIED   -- Internet media type for data --
        codetype CDATA   #IMPLIED   -- Internet media type for code --
        standby CDATA    #IMPLIED   -- message to show while loading --
        align   %Align   #IMPLIED   -- positioning inside document --
        height  %Length  #IMPLIED   -- suggested height --
        width   %Length  #IMPLIED   -- suggested width --
        border  %Length  #IMPLIED   -- suggested link border width --
        hspace  %Length  #IMPLIED   -- suggested horizontal gutter --
        vspace  %Length  #IMPLIED   -- suggested vertical gutter --
        usemap  %URL     #IMPLIED   -- reference to image map --
        shapes  (shapes) #IMPLIED   -- object has shaped hypertext links --
        ismap   (ismap)  #IMPLIED   -- use server-side image map -
        name    %URL     #IMPLIED   -- submit as part of form --
        >

<!-- the BODYTEXT element is needed to avoid problems with
      SGML mixed content, but is rarely used in actual documents -->
<!ELEMENT bodytext O O %body.content>

In general, all attribute names and values in this specification are case insensitive, except where noted otherwise. OBJECT has the following attributes:

ID
Used to define a document-wide identifier. This can be used for naming positions within documents for use as destinations of hypertext links. An ID attribute value is an SGML NAME token. NAME tokens are formed by an initial letter followed by letters in the range a-z and A-Z (no accented characters), digits, "-" and "." characters. It may also be used by the user agent or objects in the document to find and communicate with other objects embedded in the document.
DECLARE
Used to indicate that the object is to be declared but not instantiated. A detailed description of the DECLARE attribute is given below.
CODE
This is a URL that identifies an implementation for the object. In some object systems this is a class identifier.
CODEBASE
Some URL schemes used to identify implementations require an additional URL to find the implementation. CODEBASE allows you to specify that URL.
DATA
This is a URL pointing to the object's data, for instance a GIF file for an image. In the absence of the CODE attribute, the media type of the data is used to determine a default value for the CODE attribute. The implementation is then loaded as if the CODE attribute had been given explicitly.
TYPE
This specifies the Internet Media Type [Ref 7] for the data referenced by the DATA attibute in advance of actually retrieving it. In the absence of the CODE attribute, this allows the user agent to retrieve the code implementing the object concurrently with the data, and to skip over unsupported media types without needing to make a network access.
CODETYPE
This specifies the Internet Media Type [Ref 7] of the code referenced by the CODE attribute in advance of actually retrieving it. User agents may use the value of the CODETYPE attribute to skip over unsupported media types without needing to make a network access.
STANDBY
This allows you to specify a short text string the browser can show while loading the Object's implementation and data. It can include character entities for accented characters etc.
ALIGN
This determines where to place the object. The ALIGN attribute allows objects to be placed as part of the current text line, or as a distinct unit, aligned to the left, center or right.

The following values are chosen for their ease of implementation, and their independence of other graphics occurring earlier on the same line:

For ALIGN=TEXTTOP, the top of the object is vertically aligned with the top of the current font.

For ALIGN=MIDDLE, the middle of the object is vertically aligned with the baseline.

For ALIGN=TEXTMIDDLE, the middle of the object is vertically aligned with the position midway between the baseline and the x-height for the current font. The x-height is defined as the top of a lower case x in western writing systems. If the text font is an all-caps style then use the height of a capital X. For other writing systems, align the middle of the object with the middle of the text.

For ALIGN=BASELINE, the bottom of the object is vertically aligned with the baseline of the text line in which the object appears.

For ALIGN=TEXTBOTTOM, the bottom of the object is vertically aligned with the bottom of the current font.

Note the proposed Netscape extensions for the align attribute of the IMG element are context sensitive, as are some of the implementations of ALIGN=TOP. See the test page at: http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/Test/Img/imgtest.html
The following alignment values allow the object to float rather than being treated as part of the current line:

For ALIGN=LEFT, the object is floated down and over to the current left margin. Subsequent text is flowed past the right hand side of the visible area of the object.

For ALIGN=CENTER, the object is floated to after the end of the current line and centered between the left and right margins. Subsequent text starts at the beginning of the next line.

For ALIGN=RIGHT, the object is floated down and over to the current right margin. Subsequent text is flowed past the left hand side of the visible area of the object.

WIDTH
This gives the suggested width of a box enclosing the visible area of the object. The width is specified in standard units. User agents may use this value to scale an object to match the requested width if appropriate.

Smooth scaling a small image to a larger size provides an effective solution to reducing the time needed to download an image, offering better subjective results when compared to color reduction.

HEIGHT
This gives the suggested height of a box enclosing the visible area of the object. The height is specified in standard units. User agents may use this value to scale an object to match the requested height if appropriate.
BORDER
This attribute applies to the border shown when the object forms part of a hypertext link, as specified by an enclosing anchor element. The attribute specifies the suggested width of this border around the visible area of the object. The width is specified in standard units. For BORDER=0 no border should be shown. This is normally used when such a border would interfere with the visual affordances presented by the object itself. For instance, the object could render itself as a number of beveled buttons.
HSPACE
The suggested width of the space to the left and right of the box enclosing the visible area of the object. The width is specified in standard units. This attribute is used to alter the separation of preceding and following text from the object.
VSPACE
The suggested height of the space to the top and bottom of the box enclosing the visible area of the object. The height is specified in standard units.
USEMAP
This specifies auniform resource locator for a client-side image map [Ref 4] in the format proposed by Spyglass Inc. This is normally appropriate only for static images.
SHAPES
The presence of this attribute indicates that the contents of the OBJECT element contains anchors with hypertext links associated with shaped regions on the visible area of the object. See below for further information.
ISMAP
When the OBJECT element appears within a hypertext link, this attribute indicates that the server provides an image map, so that mouse clicks should be sent to the server in the same manner as for the IMG element. This is normally appropriate only for static images.
NAME
This provides a way for user agents which support FORMs to determine whether an object within a FORM block should participate in the "submit" process. If NAME is specified, the user agent should include the value of the NAME attribute and data obtained from the object along with the information derived from other form fields. The mechanism used to obtain the object's data is specific to each object system.

Note the BODYTEXT element is only needed formally when you want an OBJECT element with an empty content (other than PARAM elements).

As class identifiers in some object systems can be quite cumbersome, the CODE attribute may use a short URL to specify a class identfier indirectly. See Internet Draft on Hypertext link Relationships in HTML [Ref 3] for details on the "pointer" link relationship.


More Information About OBJECT DECLARE

OBJECT markup with the DECLARE attribute imply objects that are not created (instantiated) until needed by something that references them (i.e. late binding). Each such "binding" typically results in a separate copy of the object (this is class dependent). In other words, the OBJECT DECLARE is treated as a declaration for making an instance of an object.

If the declared object isn't supported, or fails to load, the user agent should try the content of the OBJECT DECLARE element, which is currently restricted to another OBJECT DECLARE element. The TYPE attribute can be used to specify the Internet Media Type for the object as a hint for this situation.

Examples of OBJECT DECLARE Usage

For instance:

    <OBJECT ID="obj1" DECLARE CODE=implementation >
    <PARAM NAME=param1 VALUE=value1>
    <PARAM NAME=param2 VALUE=value2>
    ...
    </OBJECT>

    <P>This points to an <A HREF="#obj1">object</A>.

Note: Anchors can exploit nested declared objects to provide alternative media for a given resource.


The PARAM element

The PARAM element allows a list of named property values (used to initialize a OLE control, plug-in module or Java applet) to be represented as a sequence of PARAM elements. Note that PARAM is an empty element and should appear without an end tag.

<!ELEMENT param - O EMPTY -- named property value -->
<!ATTLIST param
        name      CDATA             #REQUIRED  -- property name --
        value     CDATA             #IMPLIED   -- property value --
        valuetype (DATA|REF|OBJECT) DATA       -- How to interpret value --
        type      CDATA             #IMPLIED   -- Internet media type --
        >

The NAME attribute defines the property name. The case sensitivity of the name is dependent on the code implementing the object.

The VALUE attribute is used to specify the property value. It is an opaque character string whose meaning is determined by the object based on the property name. Note that CDATA attribute values need characters such as & to be escaped using the standard SGML character entities, e.g. &amp; for "&". It is also essential to escape the > character to defend against incorrect handling by many existing browsers (use &gt;).

The VALUETYPE attribute can be one of REF, OBJECT, or DATA as described below:

REF
Indicates that the value is a URL. This allows support tools to identify URLs given as parameters.
OBJECT
Indicates that the value is a URL of an OBJECT element in the same document. This is used primarily for object valued properties (where the value of a property is a pointer/reference to a running object).
DATA
Indicates that the value is to be passed directly to the object as a string. This is the default in the absence of an explicit value for VALUETYPE.

Note that the valuetype attribute value can be given without the corresponding attribute name, see examples below. This exploits a feature of SGML minimization.

The TYPE attribute is only valid for VALUETYPE=REF.

Example 1:

    <PARAM NAME="Caption" VALUE="Hello World!">
  is equivalent to
    <PARAM NAME="Caption" DATA VALUE="Hello World!">

The string "Hello World!" is passed to the object as the value for the "Caption" property.

Example 2:

    <PARAM NAME="Font" OBJECT VALUE=#MyFont>

A pointer to the object (<OBJECT> tag) referenced by #MyFont is passed to the object as the value for the "Font" property.

Example 3:

    <PARAM NAME="Source" REF VALUE=images/foo.gif>

The "Source" property of the object is passed the URL "images/foo.gif".


Client-Side Image Maps

Image maps allow hypertext links to be associated with shaped regions on an image. The following mechanism extends the anchor element and provides backwards compatibility with all existing browsers. It removes the need to duplicate image maps with textual hypertext menus for non-graphical browsers.

The following image is a navigation toolbar:

This is represented as:

    <object data="navbar.gif" shapes>
        <a href=guide.html shape=rect coords="0,0,118,28">Access Guide</a> |
        <a href=shortcut.html shape=rect coords="118,0,184,28">Go</a> |
        <a href=search.html shape=rect coords="184,0,276,28">Search</a> |
        <a href=top10.html shape=rect coords="276,0,373,28">Top Ten</a>
    </object>

On all HTML 2.0 browsers this would look like:

Access Guide | Go | Search | Top 10

The SHAPE/COORDS Attributes

If the OBJECT element includes a "SHAPES" attribute then user agents need to parse the contents of the element to look for anchors. The anchor element (<a href=...> ... </a>) is extended to permit a pair of new attributes SHAPE and COORDS. These attributes associate the hypertext link with a region on the image specified by the enclosing OBJECT element. The shape/coords attributes take one of the general forms:

shape=default

shape=rect coords="left-x, top-y, right-x, bottom-y"

shape=circle coords="center-x, center-y, radius"

shape=poly coords="x1,y1, x2,y2, x3,y3, ..."

Where x and y are measured in pixels from the left/top of the associated image. If x and y values are given with a percent sign as a suffix, the values should be interpreted as percentages of the image's width and height, respectively. For example:

   SHAPE=RECT COORDS="0, 0, 50%, 100%"

The visually impaired community have argued strongly in favor of the shaped anchor mechanism, as it forces authors to provide a way for readers to follow the links regardless of which browser they are using.

Defining Overlapping Regions

In the following graphic, the blue and green regions are mapped to different URLs. Although the regions overlap, clicking on each region loads the appropriate document.

If two or more regions overlap, the region defined first in the map definition takes precedence over other regions. For example, in the map definition for the graphic above, the green region is defined before the blue region:

    <object data="overlap.gif" shapes>
        <a href=green.html shape=rect coords="66,13,186,37">Green</a> |
        <a href=blue.html shape=rect coords="195,43,245,46">Blue</a>
    </object>

In all cases shape=default has the lowest precedence. It extends to the whole of the visible region of the object.

Combining SHAPES with server-side image maps

You can combine ISMAP with the SHAPES attribute, for example:

    <a href="http://www.hp.com/cgi-bin/imagemap/maps/hp/navbar.map">
    <object data="navbar.gif" ismap shapes">
        <a href=guide.html shape=rect coords="0,0,118,28">Access Guide</a>
        <a href=shortcut.html shape=rect coords="118,0,184,28">Go</a> |
        <a href=search.html shape=rect coords="184,0,276,28">Search</a> |
        <a href=top10.html shape=rect coords="276,0,373,28">Top Ten</a> |
    </object></a>

In this case, locally defined hotzones take precedence over server-side hotzones. The browser only sends the mouse click to the server if the click is not within a region defined by a shape attribute.

This allows authors to get the benefits of client-side image maps for parts of the image, e.g. regions that visually act as 3D bevelled buttons, while for complex image maps, or where it is undesirable to pass the maps to the client, the mouse click is dealt with by the server. For instance, in Find the ball competitions where sending the image to the client would give the competition away.

Anchors can use the SHAPE attribute together with the TARGET attribute for designating the target user interface object (e.g. frame) for displaying the linked document or resource.

The MAP element

The MAP element provides an alternative mechanism for client-side image maps. It was developed by the Spyglass company for use with the IMG element [Ref 4]. The shape and coords attributes are the same as for the shaped anchor mechanism. The earlier example for the toolbar becomes:

    <object data="navbar1.gif" usemap="#map1">
    </object>

    <map name="map1">
        <area href=guide.html alt="Access Guide" shape=rect coords="0,0,118,28">
        <area href=shortcut.html alt="Go;" shape=rect coords="118,0,184,28">
        <area href=top10.html alt="Top Ten" shape=rect coords="276,0,373,28">
    </map>

The OBJECT element references the MAP with a URL given with the USEMAP attribute. The SHAPE/COORDS attribute behave in the same way as for the shaped anchor proposal. The ALT attributes can be used to provide a few words describing each choice. This can't include markup, but can include character entities. Note that MAP isn't backwards compatible with HTML 2.0 browsers.

HTML OBJECTs DTD

The DTD or document type definition provides the formal definition of the allowed syntax for HTML objects.

<!-- Content model entities imported from parent DTD:
  %body.content allows objects to contain headers, paras,
  lists, form elements *and* arbitrarily nested objects.
-->
<!ENTITY % attrs -- ID plus additional attributes from parent DTD --
       "id  ID  #IMPLIED  -- element identifier --"
        >
        
<!ENTITY % URL "CDATA" -- uniform resource locator -->

<!ENTITY % Align "(texttop|middle|textmiddle|baseline|
                            textbottom|left|center|right)">

<!ENTITY % Length "CDATA" -- standard length value -->
<!ENTITY % Shapes "(rect|circle|poly)">
<!ENTITY % Coords "CDATA" -- shape dependent -- >

<!-- OBJECT is a character-like element for inserting objects -->
<!ELEMENT OBJECT - - (param*, bodytext)>
<!ATTLIST OBJECT
        %attrs      -- id, class, style, lang, dir --
        declare (declare) #IMPLIED  -- declare but don't instantiate flag --
        data    %URL     #IMPLIED   -- reference to object's data --
        code    %URL     #IMPLIED   -- reference to object's code --
        classid %URL     #IMPLIED   -- object class identifier --
        type    CDATA    #IMPLIED   -- Internet media type for data --
        codetype CDATA   #IMPLIED   -- Internet media type for code --
        standby CDATA    #IMPLIED   -- message to show while loading --
        align   %Align   #IMPLIED   -- positioning inside document --
        height  %Length  #IMPLIED   -- suggested height --
        width   %Length  #IMPLIED   -- suggested width --
        border  %Length  #IMPLIED   -- suggested link border width --
        hspace  %Length  #IMPLIED   -- suggested horizontal gutter --
        vspace  %Length  #IMPLIED   -- suggested vertical gutter --
        usemap  %URL     #IMPLIED   -- reference to image map --
        shapes  (shapes) #IMPLIED   -- object has shaped hypertext links --
        ismap   (ismap)  #IMPLIED   -- use server-side image map --
        name    %URL     #IMPLIED   -- submit as part of form --
        >

<!-- the BODYTEXT element is needed to avoid problems with
      SGML mixed content, but is rarely used in actual documents -->
<!ELEMENT bodytext O O %body.content>

<!ELEMENT param - O EMPTY -- named property value -->
<!ATTLIST param
        name      CDATA             #REQUIRED  -- property name --
        value     CDATA             #IMPLIED   -- property value --
        valuetype (DATA|REF|OBJECT) DATA       -- How to interpret value --
        type      CDATA             #IMPLIED   -- Internet media type --
        >

References

1. Cascading Style Sheets
W3C's working draft specification on CSS1 can be found at: "http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-css1.html"
2. Attaching Rendering Information
W3C's working draft specification on how to attach rendering information to HTML documents can be found at: http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-style.html
3. Hypertext link Relationships in HTML
The proposed relationships for use with REL/REV attributes are described in the Internet Draft: ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-html-relrev-00.txt
4. Client-Side Image maps
Spyglass Client Side Image Maps: http://www.spyglass.com/techspec/img_maps.html
5. HTML3 Scripting
W3C's working draft specification on scripting in HTML documents can be found at: http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-script.html
6. HTML3 Forms
W3C's working draft specification on forms in HTML documents can be found at: http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-forms.html
7. Internet Media Types - RFC 1590
J. Postel. "Media Type Registration Procedure." RFC 1590, USC/ISI, March 1994. This can be found at ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1590.txt.
8. MIME - RFC 1521
Borenstein N., and N. Freed, "MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part One: Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies", RFC 1521, Bellcore, Innosoft, September 1993. This can be found at ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1521.txt.
9. Inline Data
The data: URL scheme is defined by the Internet Draft ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-masinter-url-data-00.txt.
10. Java Applets
Complete specifications on Java can be found at http://java.sun.com/.
11. The Component Object Model Specification
This is available from http://www.microsoft.com/intdev/inttech/comintro.htm.
12. The Microsoft Internet Technologies
Complete specifications for the Microsoft internet technologies can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/intdev/default.htm.
13. OSF DCE
Further information about the OSF Distributed Computing Environment can be found at http://www.osf.org/dce.

W3C: The World Wide Web Consortium: http://www.w3.org/