Protocol Action: Internet Calendaring and Scheduling to Proposed Standard
The IESG <iesg-secretary@ietf.org> Tue, 13 October 1998 11:45 UTC
Received: (from adm@localhost) by ietf.org (8.8.5/8.8.7a) id HAA20275 for ietf-123-outbound.10@ietf.org; Tue, 13 Oct 1998 07:45:02 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from CNRI.Reston.VA.US (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ietf.org (8.8.5/8.8.7a) with ESMTP id HAA20250; Tue, 13 Oct 1998 07:44:51 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <199810131144.HAA20250@ietf.org>
To: IETF-Announce:;
Cc: RFC Editor <rfc-editor@isi.edu>
Cc: Internet Architecture Board <iab@isi.edu>
Cc: ietf-calendar@IMC.ORG
From: The IESG <iesg-secretary@ietf.org>
Subject: Protocol Action: Internet Calendaring and Scheduling to Proposed Standard
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 07:44:51 -0400
Sender: scoya@ns.cnri.reston.va.us
The IESG has approved publication of the following Internet-Drafts as Proposed Standards: o Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) <draft-ietf-calsch-ical-12.txt> o iCalendar Transport-Independent Interoperability Protocol (iTIP) Scheduling Events, BusyTime, To-dos and Journal Entries <draft-ietf-calsch-itip-07.txt> o iCalendar Message-based Interoperability Protocol (iMIP) <draft-ietf-calsch-imip-08.txt> These documents are the product of the Calendaring and Scheduling Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Keith Moore and Patrik Faltstrom. Technical Summary These documents defines first a textbased format for calendar events based on the MIME-directory specification. Secondly, extensions to this format is defined to enable group scheduling. Lastly, methods are described for how to pass these objects via email between parties, i.e. a description of the flow of objects. Working Group Summary The choice of the MIME-Directory specification as a base for the work in this workinggroup was not controversial. A lot of the work was influenced by the parallell work with the vCard specification for whitepages information. The various attributes in the Core Object Specification created a lot of discussion, specifically the timezone specifications. Handling of repeating events, and changes of individual events in a recurring chain, was another issue which was discussed in great detail. Not many existing implementations of calendaring and scheduling software handle timezones and recurring events the same, so creating a format which gives the needed freedom was a great challenge to the working group. However, after taking a couple of steps back and defining how one could use timezone and recurring event information, consensus was found in the group. Protocol Quality Patrik Faltstrom reviewed the specification for IESG. Support for early versions of the calendar object format exists in various calendar softwares already. This from many vendors, which includes manufactures of desktop systems, server software and even cellular phones.