Subject: Protocol Action: Internet Calendaring and Scheduling to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 07:44:51 -0400

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.

---

From: Anik Ganguly <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 08:51:07 -0400

Congratulations WG!

A hearty thanks to all of you and especially to the editors who labored
long and hard to get the documents to reflect the consensus of the WG over
2 years.

Thanks again, it's been a pleasure working with you all to achieve this
important milestone.

-- Anik