Subject: Re: RECAP & Questions of CPL RECUR Issues.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 15:06:44 -0400

John wrote:
>         If my calendar turns "every Monday for a year" into "1/1, 1/8, 
1/15,
>1/22, ...", then I can't edit it to be "every Tuesday" without a massive
>investment of my time.

Under the covers it is going to have to roll it out somehow so that the 
entries can be shown in the UI to you (or so that 'exceptions' or changes 
to individual instances can be applied and managed!).  If the UI makes a 
change that requires _you_ to jump thru hoops to reschedule them all, is 
that the problem w/the spec or w/the CUA?  We are not in the business of 
spec'ing out UIs for CUAs here, we are in the business of specing out a 
data interchange and interop format.  They are not the same things; go get 
a better CUA w/a better UI...

>Yeah, but I don't think they simplify the conceptual model; they just add 
extra
>limitations that the user has to understand.

From what Ive been able to get out of the exchange between iptel and 
calsch is that the concerns are not those of the end users but rather the 
vendors implementing iptel.  As such, "user confusion" is not a likely 
conern (unless you expect a poor UI/GUI and thats not something we can or 
should try to spec out).

Besides, what CU is actually reading RRULEs that their CUA generates and 
trying to understand them?!?!  A whole lot fewer than those that don't 
do/try it.  The recurrence grammar/model is not something that CUs will 
(or should!) really have to worry about.  They simply want to be able to 
schedule "that weekly Monday AM and Thursday PM team meeting for the next 
18 months at 9AM". 

Bruce
===========================================================================
Bruce Kahn                                INet: [email-masked]
Iris Associates                          Phone: 978.392.5335
Westford, MA, USA 01886                    FAX: and nothing but the FAX...
Standard disclaimers apply, even where prohibited by law...

---

From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 12:09:05 -0400

[email-masked] wrote:

> John wrote:
> >         If my calendar turns "every Monday for a year" into
> "1/1, 1/8, 1/15,
> Under the covers it is going to have to roll it out somehow so
> that the entries can be shown in the UI to you (or so that
> 'exceptions' or changes to individual instances can be applied
> and managed!).  If the UI makes a change that requires _you_ to
> jump thru hoops to reschedule them all, is that the problem
> w/the spec or w/the CUA?

With the CUA.  In context, I was pointing out that a CUA that
does that is not worrying about.

> >Yeah, but I don't think they simplify the conceptual model;
> they just add extra
> From what Ive been able to get out of the exchange between
> iptel and calsch is that the concerns are not those of the end
> users but rather the vendors implementing iptel.

That's iptel's concern.  Meanwhile, I am concerned with the fact
that RECUR is too complex for calendar users; if we're going to
come up with a fix for iptel, I want a fix that makes RECUR
usable for calendaring, too.

> As such, "user confusion" is not a likely conern (unless you
> expect a poor UI/GUI and thats not something we can or should
> try to spec out).

We don't spec a UI, but we spec the data model that the UI has to
represent.  At present, I doubt it is possible to build a good UI
to represent RECUR.  The UI has to reflect the concepts in the
data model, and RECUR contains far too many concepts.

> Besides, what CU is actually reading RRULEs that their CUA
> generates and trying to understand them?!?!

In effect, everybody.  They won't read the RECUR syntax, but they
will read the UI's presentation of them.  Anybody who gets an
invitation to a recurring meeting wants to remember the rule for
when it happens (e.g., "Mondays at 3:00"), so that they're less
dependent on the calendar.  If there's a part of the rule that
their CUA's backend understands, but the UI can't represent, then
it'll be on their calendar, but it won't be in their mental model
of when the event occurs, so they're likely to miss it.

> They simply want to be able to schedule "that weekly Monday AM
> and Thursday PM team meeting for the next 18 months at 9AM".

The problem is that they can receive invitations that are *far*
more complex than that.

--
/==============================================================\
|John Stracke    | http://www.ecal.com |My opinions are my own.|
|Chief Scientist |=============================================|
|eCal Corp.      |"Chris is the most self-effacing guy I know."|
[email-masked]|"Well, I'm not *that* good at it."           |
\==============================================================/