kolab format history

[Bernhard Reiter]

Am Monday, 14. November 2011 15:38:46 schrieb Thomas Koch:
> This mail however reveals no detailed motivation why iCalendar 1.0 at that
> time did not fit.

Both Bo, Joon and Martin set out to write a fitting iCalendar
profile or subset and all more or less separately came back with: 
Does not work.
It would probably have taken them several days of work to document 
in writing the reasons in a way that could be comprehensible.
Anyone woud probably have to put in the 20 or more days of trying hard
before getting to the point, as I've observed.

As far as I can remember one issue was that additional restraints
would have to be defined to make different client behave consistently.
This constraints would not be observed by other (non-kolab) clients, who would 
believe they could just write iCalender as they like. Doing a new format will 
prevent other clients from breaking the necessary constraints.

Another issue is the difference of a format to save someones data or
a format to exchange data. The exchange data tends to always have a minimal
common subset and lot of interpretations in the wild. ICalendar as used in 
iTip is where we can observe this quite nicely. There are no compliant 
implementations (as far as I know). Fully compliant that is. Only observed 
usage in the wild. There are just too many options in iCalendar and its 
purpose as an exchance format makes it unsuitable to use it within an 
implementation that tries to provide more than the common subset of functions
in a reliable manner.

I lack time to write up more, I hope this is giving you some hints none the 
less.

Bernhard 

-- 
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