kolab format history

[Thomas Koch]

Hi,

I've finished scanning the new standards CalWS-ReST, iCalendar 2.0 and xCal. 
They look very promissing. So I want to find out, what the original intentions 
and motivating problems for the Kolab XML format were.

I found the first mentioning of the format in june 2004 on kolab devel by Bo 
Thorsen: http://kolab.org/pipermail/kolab-devel/2004-June/001438.html
This mail however reveals no detailed motivation why iCalendar 1.0 at that 
time did not fit.

CVS however contains this enlighting doc:
http://kolab.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs-kolab.cgi/doc/kolab-formats/Attic/kolab-file-
format.lyx
Does anybody have a rendered version of this file?

It points out problems to map MS Exchange's MAPI format to iCalendar and gives 
this as the motivation for kolab xml. (All evil comes from M$...)

Now the question is whether the motivation from 2004 is still true for today 
with a revised iCalendar format and much better public knowledge about MAPI?

Referring to the recent discussion about XML schema and preservation of 
unknown properties: iCalendar supports vendor properties either as IANA 
registered properties or as x-props. Wouldn't that be enough?

Regards,

Thomas Koch, http://www.koch.ro