In HTML 4.01, there's a mechanism for including inline data in the data
attribute of the object element. 

http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/struct/objects.html#h-13.3.1 

I've noticed that the example object tag in the latest XHTML2 draft has dropped
this practice[1]. What replacements, if any, are being considered for this
method?

Robert Sayre

1.) http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-object.html#sec_14.1.3 .