I've been collecting notes about this file for a few years. Some of the information in this post was previously covered right here in the comments on HN a few

I've been collecting notes about this file for a few years. Some of the information in this post was previously covered right here in the comments on HN a few years back: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12793157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12793157> The top reply there links to an online file(1)-like tool that identified it as a MacWrite II document. Last time I checked, the tool was updated and identifies the file as "Word for the Macintosh document (v4.0)" (pretty much what my system's file(1) says about it). We actually have a scan of Robert Cailliau's copy with his handwritten notes (including the infamous, "Vague but exciting..." remark). It's neither 20 nor 24 pages but instead 16 and differs in several respects: <https://cds.cern.ch/record/1405411 https://cds.cern.ch/record/1405411>; the version linked in the post and described erroneously as "the original" on w3.org clearly isn't the original and has been changed in several ways besides just "the date added in May 1990". Rather, the May 1990 version here is the second revision of the original that was first passed to Cailliau, and by November 1990 Berners-Lee and Cailliau were calling this second revision "HyperText and CERN"[1][2]. That is, "Information Management: A Proposal" is the one authored solely by TBL and given to Cailliau. It's not the version that appears here. "HyperText and CERN" from May 1990 is what we're looking at here, but was mistakenly also published as "Information Management: A Proposal". Later, TBL and Cailliau coauthored a joint work called "WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a Hypertext Project"[1][3] that referenced "HyperText and CERN" by name. TBL is also known to have used WriteNow—there are lots of .wn files littering w3.org. I now believe (since last summer) that it's likely that TBL authored this revision of the proposal in WriteNow (even if he didn't save it in the WriteNow format) or used WriteNow at least for the RTF export. Refer again to [2]. 1. <https://cds.cern.ch/record/2639699/files/Proposal_Nov-1990.pdf https://cds.cern.ch/record/2639699/files/Proposal_Nov-1990.p...> 2. <https://www.w3.org/Administration/HTandCERN. https://www.w3.org/Administration/HTandCERN.> 3. <https://www.w3.org/Proposal https://www.w3.org/Proposal>