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This is from the www-talk@w3.org mailing list archives:

From: Mike Doyle

Please note from our Web site that, in almost all cases, Eolas' Weblet-related technologies will be licensed free of charge for noncommercial use.

Does this mean that the only case that it DOES violate it is if you're Microsoft?

I dislike a lot of things about Microsoft, but it looks to me like they were exercising on Mr. Doyle's offer. I could be wrong..

I would expect the head of process quality at Ford to know that quality means that the product does what it is supposed to do; that is, it conforms to specifications. In addition, I would expect the head of process quality at Ford to know that the World Wide Web is not limited to Microsoft software, but in fact has a set of specifications of its own. Whenever I write or update a web site, I run each page through the W3C markup validation service. I recommend that site to your (and his) attention; it is a good starting point for learning how to write good HTML, and thus quality web sites.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)

So people can migrate from Word without noticing the difference.

And what about those of us who want something better?

Granted that many people think that the Word interface was handed down on Mt. Sinai, but there are at least three other approaches.

1. A bare-bones Notepad-like look, when all you want to do is type and save.
2. A split-screen reveal-codes view like Wordperfect has. Some of us think HTML markup is all a person needs in this world.
3. A rich outline view. Long documents are best handled hierarchically. The Word outline implementation is fairly clumsy.

The whole method of defining and using style sheets could be done better to encourage using them more.

Perhaps there should be a special word processing mouse configuration that brings up special menus for power users. A power user might prefer no on-screen menus but would want them to appear as needed by moving the mouse pointer to a particular spot on the screen.

More could be done with tabbed interfaces to display multiple documents or different places in the same document. The tabs could be either editable documents or browser windows. The tabs could be predefined groups of documents, Web pages and PDFs the way some browsers let you define groups of Web pages as tabs.

Already Outlook 2003 "provides an integrated solution for managing e-mail messages, schedules, tasks, notes, contacts, and other information. Outlook 2003 also delivers innovations you can use to stay organized and collaborate better--all from one place." Maybe that's the direction Open Office should be heading if it wants people to be comfortable.

Or, some people might want their word processing program to look more like their browser.

I'm more interested in using XML as a means for language independent object persistence (not just cheesy .NET XmlSerializer class stuff either). How much coverage of such things is there in the book? Ie; creating an object in Java on one machine, persisting it and it's state to an XML file, and recreating it on some other machine in C++ or C#. I'm tired of writing my own "protocols" to migrate running code from one app to another.

You have obviously never looked into soap, which seems to be able to address every requirement you are describing.

But, not using Soap is quite common on Slashdot ;)

In particular note the WAP Binary XML format (WBXML) that is used to transfer XML to and from mobile devices.

The XML Binary Characterization Working Group is tasked with gathering information about uses cases where the overhead of generating, parsing, transmitting, storing, or accessing XML-based data may be deemed too great for a particular application, characterizing the properties that XML provides as well as those that are required by the use cases, and establishing objective, shared measurements to help judge whether XML 1.x and alternate (binary) encodings provide the required properties.

The XML Binary Characterization Working Group is tasked with gathering information about uses cases where the overhead of generating, parsing, transmitting, storing, or accessing XML-based data may be deemed too great for a particular application, characterizing the properties that XML provides as well as those that are required by the use cases, and establishing objective, shared measurements to help judge whether XML 1.x and alternate (binary) encodings provide the required properties.

I agree that it's too wordy and hard to parse, and I definitely don't think it's human-friendly. (Only if one's been immersed in it for a while does it become easily readable.)

I also dislike the XML data model at all. I strongly prefer the RDF data model (not to be confused with the bad XML serialization of RDF), basically a set of subject-predicate-object triples. It's a much more natural data model: things have properties, and they do actions. It's as simple as that. XML's inherently tree-like structure is much more awkward for real-world and purely electronic data alike.

Personally, my favorite structuring language is Notation 3 (a very readable extended RDF serialization).

Will Macromedia Flash Player 6 work with all screen readers and other assistive technologies?

Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) makes it easier for all assistive technologies to incorporate support for Macromedia Flash Player. Once the contents of a Macromedia Flash movie are placed under MSAA, it is up to the individual assistive technology to render that content for the user. Since MSAA support is a new feature of Macromedia Flash Player, many assistive technologies still do not know how to handle the information made available under MSAA. At the release of Macromedia Flash MX, Window-Eyes from GW Micro is the first product to take advantage of the improvements in Macromedia Flash Player.

Well, since it only works on MS platforms, most assistive technologies don't work with MSAA, and there are better ways of accomplishing the desired result, I can only say

Bzzzt. Thanks for playing.

P.S. The Macromedia Accessibility FAQ page does not pass all of the Priority 1,2 and 3 accessibility checkpoints of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

Turning off Flash is great solution. Hopefully the annoying uses of Flash will lead to more focused attention on SVG development. I'm all for open standards, but Flash is so ubiquitous right now that I wonder if SVG usage will grow beyond a threshold of public awareness. We need a popular application for SVG like there is Firefox/Mozilla for the browser world.

You're telling me! Shoddy web code for a start!

One of my pet hates (as a freelance web developer, diehard on web standards and doing things properly) is people who pretend to use XHTML, but don't actually fucking USE XHTML!

This site is written oldskool style, with a table based layout done in XHTML - completely missing the point of using XHTML to do semantic layout and CSS for visual arrangement. OK, they've used CSS, but it's to style their already laid-out-in-a-table content.

Furthermore, the site does not validate - not even close! Yet again, half the point of using XHTML is to make well-formed documents. What's the fucking point when developers don't even check their pages validate?

We've got nesting errors, invalid characters, use of attributes that don't exist in XHTML, and two closing html tags? You might have thought whoever wrote this site might have validated their code before putting it live, but the author of this page appears not to even have given it a cursory glance.

Who knows how much this site cost? I'll bet it was a considerable sum of tax money, and it hasn't even been built properly. Fucking USELESS!

When are we going to see a government site built properly, using web standards correctly? It's hardly rocket science, but these idiots in charge of our national computer security can't even use a fucking HTML validator, so is it any wonder the public are screwed?

What's more, functionality similar to what XmlHttpRequest provides is currently making its way into the DOM standard.

DOM 3 Load and Save was published as a W3C recommendation almost a year ago, and works in Mozilla, Firefox, Konqueror and the latest Opera betas.

I think the DOM they are referring to is a W3 standard not a MS one.

Disclaimer: I'm a web developer, and I don't always do things this way myself. They are rules of thumb, not laws that must be followed.

The most important thing to bear in mind is that you need to know what it is you want to achieve with the website. Some firms are all too happy to sell you an all-singing, all-dancing e-commerce haven (and charge appropriately), when all you actually need is a contact form, address and phone number on a single page.

Business stuff:

• Use a contract. This is for your protection and theirs. If they don't use contracts, the chances of them getting sucked into a legal battle with one of their other clients rises. It also outlines exactly what you expect from each other in clear terms, which is, amazingly, an overlooked step in building a site a lot of the time.

• Get concrete deliverables. Example deliverables:

  1. A systems requirement document detailing exactly what it is you need.
  2. A mock-up of a couple of pages to see how they look.
  3. A demo version that doesn't work in all browsers.
  4. A beta version that is supposed to do everything.
  5. Final version.

  These deliverables will be missed a couple of times. The important thing is that your contract states what constitutes acceptable quality and how slips will be resolved - if they lose money every time they miss a date or forget a feature, they'll keep to schedule and not rush things out the door.

• Every time you pay them, get the copyright for the work they have done so far signed over. If they start acting badly, you need to be able to take the work elsewhere instead of being forced to either put up with them or writing off the current investment.
• In a similar vein, make sure that the code they write isn't dependent upon any in-house tools. If you get your code off them, but it is built on top of their proprietary shopping cart API (for example), it's useless.
• As everybody else said, talk to a few of their clients.

There are a few signs to watch out for from people selling snake-oil.

• Unlimited bandwidth or disk space. The truth is, there are limits, and you won't know about them until they decide you're using too many resources.
• Guaranteed search engine placement. They can't do that. Additionally, ask them if they can guarantee stuff like this, how come they aren't #1 in Google for "web design"?
• "Meta tags". Virtually no search engine has used these in the past decade, so if they tell you they'll add them to each page, they are working with very obsolete information.

The human touch. Visit their offices a couple of times.

• Do people seem relaxed?
• Is it some guy in his parents' basement?
• Is it the same people both times?

Technology:

• Validate their HTML. If they have no errors, that's a good sign. If they have one or two errors, ask them about it. If they have dozens or hundreds of errors, stay away, they don't have any Q.A.
• Validate their CSS. If they don't use it, stay away, they are using 90s technology in the year 2005. If they have a couple of errors, ask them about it.
• Look through the validator output to see if they have any lines starting with width and ending in px; (percentages etc are fine). If any of them are setting anything to a width greater than 200px, it's a sign that they use fixed width layouts. This is a negative sign, but not the end of the world. Ask them what steps they take to deal with people on small screens - a technical explanation like "we offer alternative stylesheets" is okay, being blown off with "nobody has small screens like that" is very bad.
• Go to the front page of the most recent addition to their portfolio. View source. Are there <table> tags in there? Look at the

Disclaimer: I'm a web developer, and I don't always do things this way myself. They are rules of thumb, not laws that must be followed.

The most important thing to bear in mind is that you need to know what it is you want to achieve with the website. Some firms are all too happy to sell you an all-singing, all-dancing e-commerce haven (and charge appropriately), when all you actually need is a contact form, address and phone number on a single page.

Business stuff:

• Use a contract. This is for your protection and theirs. If they don't use contracts, the chances of them getting sucked into a legal battle with one of their other clients rises. It also outlines exactly what you expect from each other in clear terms, which is, amazingly, an overlooked step in building a site a lot of the time.

• Get concrete deliverables. Example deliverables:

  1. A systems requirement document detailing exactly what it is you need.
  2. A mock-up of a couple of pages to see how they look.
  3. A demo version that doesn't work in all browsers.
  4. A beta version that is supposed to do everything.
  5. Final version.

  These deliverables will be missed a couple of times. The important thing is that your contract states what constitutes acceptable quality and how slips will be resolved - if they lose money every time they miss a date or forget a feature, they'll keep to schedule and not rush things out the door.

• Every time you pay them, get the copyright for the work they have done so far signed over. If they start acting badly, you need to be able to take the work elsewhere instead of being forced to either put up with them or writing off the current investment.
• In a similar vein, make sure that the code they write isn't dependent upon any in-house tools. If you get your code off them, but it is built on top of their proprietary shopping cart API (for example), it's useless.
• As everybody else said, talk to a few of their clients.

There are a few signs to watch out for from people selling snake-oil.

• Unlimited bandwidth or disk space. The truth is, there are limits, and you won't know about them until they decide you're using too many resources.
• Guaranteed search engine placement. They can't do that. Additionally, ask them if they can guarantee stuff like this, how come they aren't #1 in Google for "web design"?
• "Meta tags". Virtually no search engine has used these in the past decade, so if they tell you they'll add them to each page, they are working with very obsolete information.

The human touch. Visit their offices a couple of times.

• Do people seem relaxed?
• Is it some guy in his parents' basement?
• Is it the same people both times?

Technology:

• Validate their HTML. If they have no errors, that's a good sign. If they have one or two errors, ask them about it. If they have dozens or hundreds of errors, stay away, they don't have any Q.A.
• Validate their CSS. If they don't use it, stay away, they are using 90s technology in the year 2005. If they have a couple of errors, ask them about it.
• Look through the validator output to see if they have any lines starting with width and ending in px; (percentages etc are fine). If any of them are setting anything to a width greater than 200px, it's a sign that they use fixed width layouts. This is a negative sign, but not the end of the world. Ask them what steps they take to deal with people on small screens - a technical explanation like "we offer alternative stylesheets" is okay, being blown off with "nobody has small screens like that" is very bad.
• Go to the front page of the most recent addition to their portfolio. View source. Are there <table> tags in there? Look at the

I would check their existing work against the w3c validator
http://validator.w3.org/
and open them up in a selection of browsers.

Its is unlikely you will find any non trivial site that passes the validator, but you can see who's is worst.

You may not be that concerned about browser compatibility, but it does show how much care they take when writing their code (in case of dynamic) or html

You could go as far as putting it in their contract that their pages pass the validator.

But note that passing the validator is not absolute proof that the page is correct, just that the sgml/xml is valid.

"May I remind you that while spam is an entirely American invention" So is the Internet.

I hear they are working on a "hypertext" transfer protocol -- it's kindof like Apple's hypercard where you can "link" to various media in a free-form manner. A "mouse" is used to select which links to follow, and the transport protocol sends the appropriate network packets to retrieve the data.

That's the XUL namespace. It's just like the xhtml namespace, but funnier.

there's no answer except javascript for firing off a new window.

That's the reason why XHTML is modularized. You can easily load the target module that adds the possibility to use the target attribute for links.

Here is an example of a customized Doctype: http://www.juicystudio.com/tutorial/xhtml/module.a sp#target

However, I don't recommend using the target attribute, since it breaks the browser's back button. If you really want to use popups, then design it to work without JavaScript too:

<a href="foo.html" onclick="window.open(this.href, 'newwindow'); return false;">

Such a link also allows you to open the link in a new window/tab manually without problems.

For XForms you already have a Flash viewer and a server-side XForms to HTML + JavaScript implementation. There are lots more, but those are the only two I've tested which implement a good deal of the standard and are good-looking..

Recent W3C standards have been a complete joke...

Really? I thought CSS was frickin' brilliant.

The dude said recent back there. CSS 1.0 dates from 1996 with a revision in 1999. CSS 1.0 is now finally reasonably well-supported by modern browsers. CSS 2.0 was first a recommendation in 1998, but wasn't able to be completely implemented until the standard was fixed. CSS may be brilliant, but CSS 2.0 is a 1998 idea. Somebody born in 1998 would be turning 7 this year. CSS 3.0 is still be hashed out. Recent W3C standards have not (yet) had anything like the effect of CSS, and even CSS 2.0 was very slow to get above a threshold of support.

It's worth noting, though, that target="_blank" is deprecated in XHTML strict. If you're trying to write strictly compliant web pages (that is, XHTML 1.0 Strict/1.1), there's no answer except javascript for firing off a new window.

That said, I like the idea of NO popups of ANY sort without authorization. As long as Firefox clues me in that it stopped a popup so I can approve the site, I'm in. Though, I'd like to see a "one time" authorization. As in, I'm on some website I don't intend to be at again, I need to see one popup to complete some task, and that's it. I don't want it on my whitelist, I just want to see the one popup. Sort of like a firewall. Do I want to allow this: once, always, not this time, never.

Yawn. Yet another anti-W3C troll. I swear you guys are getting more and more obvious. Take this blatant lie, for example:

And they apparently won't even consider taking any of Microsoft's adaptations to the standards into consideration

Then how do you explain display: inline-block;, which started out as an Internet Explorer extension to CSS? If their stance on Microsoft is so clear, then surely you'll be able to point me to a statement a W3C member has made saying such a thing?

So really, why should Microsoft give any credibility to these standards and the people behind them

Microsoft helped develop both HTML and CSS (check the credits in all the specifications), and have given a lot of money to the W3C over the years. You are quite simply ignorant.

Surely that's what Microsoft et al. thought when they made an addition to Web pages called VML used mostly by Office? Much of that language, with later input from Adobe, Corel, Canon et al. became the SVG that hasn't caught on too much.

I think Web Forms 2.0 will suffer the same fate as SVG does (there's already a popular vector format called Flash and a popular form format as part of the still-popular HTML 4 spec, though Web Forms seems to be simply an attempt to translate one format, XForms, into HTML...right?).

Surely that's what Microsoft et al. thought when they made an addition to Web pages called VML used mostly by Office? Much of that language, with later input from Adobe, Corel, Canon et al. became the SVG that hasn't caught on too much.

I think Web Forms 2.0 will suffer the same fate as SVG does (there's already a popular vector format called Flash and a popular form format as part of the still-popular HTML 4 spec, though Web Forms seems to be simply an attempt to translate one format, XForms, into HTML...right?).

You make a good point. I looked at the XForms spec, and it was written by IBM, Xerox, Adobe, SAP, Novell, Sun, et al. What do these companies have in common? None of them develop major Web browsers.

Tim Berners-Lee is all about making the web smarter and this mspace and other projects like SIMILE are changing the way we leverage data in smarter ways keep up the good work.

SIMILE is a joint project conducted by the W3C, HP, MIT Libraries, and MIT CSAIL. SIMILE seeks to enhance inter-operability among digital assets, schemata/vocabularies/ontologies, metadata, and services. A key challenge is that the collections which must inter-operate are often distributed across individual, community, and institutional stores. We seek to be able to provide end-user services by drawing upon the assets, schemata/vocabularies/ontologies, and metadata held in such stores.

SIMILE will leverage and extend DSpace, enhancing its support for arbitrary schemata and metadata, primarily though the application of RDF and semantic web techniques. The project also aims to implement a digital asset dissemination architecture based upon web standards. The dissemination architecture will provide a mechanism to add useful "views" to a particular digital artifact (i.e. asset, schema, or metadata instance), and bind those views to consuming services.

25 million browsers (including mine) are still unable to properly render Slashdot.

That's not Mozilla's problem. Slashdot's markup is atrocious, really shamefully and embarassingly bad. It's for the Slashcode team to fix the problem, not for the Mozilla team. And it's pretty shameful that they don't. The fact that Slashdot explicitly blocks the W3C validator proves they know this.

With an author as hot IMHO and obsessed with XHTML validity (just a few URI errors on the NYPL home page) as Bickner, I wouldn't mind. I like writing valid XHTML--the awareness to validation keeps me awake, if only a waste of time in the process. That said, I too prefer the GIMP over paying for anything like PS/Fireworks; it seems good enough and "cheap" enough to me. I can see the flood of e-mails to Bickner now, with Subject: GIMP...

For those interested, here is the actual detailed/lengthy FIPS PUB 180-1 from NIST, as typical, Wikipedia has a nice summary, and the W3 Folks have a short snippet ...

Is there any possiblity IE7 will support XHTML 1.0 properly, or XHTML 1.1 at all?

Not that we'd want to rush things - given MS's struggles with XML, actual support for XHTML may be an unfair demand. After all, the XHTML 1.1 standard isn't quite four years old yet. Still, maybe the new IE should at least be able to communicate its ineptitude with XML to the world's webservers. Maybe MS could resource a project team to edit the string that will give the next-generation IE a sane Accept header. (Maybe Steve Jobs would strike back by forming an Apple project team to find out what an Accept header is.)

• HTML 2.0
• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4.0
• HTML 4.01
• XHTML Basic
• XHTML 1.0
• XHTML 1.1
• XHTML 2.0
• CSS 1.0
• CSS 2.0
• CSS 2.1
• CSS 3.0
• ECMA-262 (a.k.a. JavaScript)

Also, does it still execute arbitrary code from WWW sites without the user's permission? Or is this considered a feature by Microsoft?

• HTML 2.0
• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4.0
• HTML 4.01
• XHTML Basic
• XHTML 1.0
• XHTML 1.1
• XHTML 2.0
• CSS 1.0
• CSS 2.0
• CSS 2.1
• CSS 3.0
• ECMA-262 (a.k.a. JavaScript)

Also, does it still execute arbitrary code from WWW sites without the user's permission? Or is this considered a feature by Microsoft?

• HTML 2.0
• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4.0
• HTML 4.01
• XHTML Basic
• XHTML 1.0
• XHTML 1.1
• XHTML 2.0
• CSS 1.0
• CSS 2.0
• CSS 2.1
• CSS 3.0
• ECMA-262 (a.k.a. JavaScript)

Also, does it still execute arbitrary code from WWW sites without the user's permission? Or is this considered a feature by Microsoft?

• HTML 2.0
• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4.0
• HTML 4.01
• XHTML Basic
• XHTML 1.0
• XHTML 1.1
• XHTML 2.0
• CSS 1.0
• CSS 2.0
• CSS 2.1
• CSS 3.0
• ECMA-262 (a.k.a. JavaScript)

Also, does it still execute arbitrary code from WWW sites without the user's permission? Or is this considered a feature by Microsoft?

• HTML 2.0
• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4.0
• HTML 4.01
• XHTML Basic
• XHTML 1.0
• XHTML 1.1
• XHTML 2.0
• CSS 1.0
• CSS 2.0
• CSS 2.1
• CSS 3.0
• ECMA-262 (a.k.a. JavaScript)

Also, does it still execute arbitrary code from WWW sites without the user's permission? Or is this considered a feature by Microsoft?

• HTML 2.0
• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4.0
• HTML 4.01
• XHTML Basic
• XHTML 1.0
• XHTML 1.1
• XHTML 2.0
• CSS 1.0
• CSS 2.0
• CSS 2.1
• CSS 3.0
• ECMA-262 (a.k.a. JavaScript)

Also, does it still execute arbitrary code from WWW sites without the user's permission? Or is this considered a feature by Microsoft?

• HTML 2.0
• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4.0
• HTML 4.01
• XHTML Basic
• XHTML 1.0
• XHTML 1.1
• XHTML 2.0
• CSS 1.0
• CSS 2.0
• CSS 2.1
• CSS 3.0
• ECMA-262 (a.k.a. JavaScript)

Also, does it still execute arbitrary code from WWW sites without the user's permission? Or is this considered a feature by Microsoft?

• HTML 2.0
• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4.0
• HTML 4.01
• XHTML Basic
• XHTML 1.0
• XHTML 1.1
• XHTML 2.0
• CSS 1.0
• CSS 2.0
• CSS 2.1
• CSS 3.0
• ECMA-262 (a.k.a. JavaScript)

Also, does it still execute arbitrary code from WWW sites without the user's permission? Or is this considered a feature by Microsoft?

• HTML 2.0
• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4.0
• HTML 4.01
• XHTML Basic
• XHTML 1.0
• XHTML 1.1
• XHTML 2.0
• CSS 1.0
• CSS 2.0
• CSS 2.1
• CSS 3.0
• ECMA-262 (a.k.a. JavaScript)

Also, does it still execute arbitrary code from WWW sites without the user's permission? Or is this considered a feature by Microsoft?

• HTML 2.0
• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4.0
• HTML 4.01
• XHTML Basic
• XHTML 1.0
• XHTML 1.1
• XHTML 2.0
• CSS 1.0
• CSS 2.0
• CSS 2.1
• CSS 3.0
• ECMA-262 (a.k.a. JavaScript)

Also, does it still execute arbitrary code from WWW sites without the user's permission? Or is this considered a feature by Microsoft?

• HTML 2.0
• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4.0
• HTML 4.01
• XHTML Basic
• XHTML 1.0
• XHTML 1.1
• XHTML 2.0
• CSS 1.0
• CSS 2.0
• CSS 2.1
• CSS 3.0
• ECMA-262 (a.k.a. JavaScript)

Also, does it still execute arbitrary code from WWW sites without the user's permission? Or is this considered a feature by Microsoft?

• HTML 2.0
• HTML 3.2
• HTML 4.0
• HTML 4.01
• XHTML Basic
• XHTML 1.0
• XHTML 1.1
• XHTML 2.0
• CSS 1.0
• CSS 2.0
• CSS 2.1
• CSS 3.0
• ECMA-262 (a.k.a. JavaScript)

Also, does it still execute arbitrary code from WWW sites without the user's permission? Or is this considered a feature by Microsoft?

CSS/Edge was written by a Netscape Employee (Eric worked for Netscape back then and was head developper for Dev/Edge IIRC) to show off the new CSS capabilities in the Gecko rendering engine. It was a completely biased test case!

It is true that at that point, CSS in Netscape was superior to any other browser; IE/Mac was second, and Opera had slightly better support than IE/Windows. There were no other CSS browsers worth mentioning (Omniweb, iCab and Netscape 4 didn't cut it), and Opera's CSS support was very decent in comparison to the other browsers available at the time. The competition from Mozilla spurred development from Opera, and they have since 2002 taken the lead when it comes to CSS (AFAIK, no other browser supports the whole of CSS 2.1 - for one thing, Opera is the only browser to support counters).

Hey, CSS2 was ratified in 1998, it's 2005! The Mozilla devs should feel ashamed they are lagging behind in compliance!

The catch is, the media to be searched has to be prepped first.

Holy fuck, that's just like saying text files have to be "prepped" before they can be part of a global hypertext system.

Dear god, whatever shall we do.

The catch is, the media to be searched has to be prepped first.

Holy fuck, that's just like saying text files have to be "prepped" before they can be part of a global hypertext system.

Dear god, whatever shall we do.