Subject: [Jcardcal] Protocol Action: 'jCal: The JSON format for iCalendar' to Proposed Standard (draft-ietf-jcardcal-jcal-10.txt)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 10:04:36 -0700

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'jCal: The JSON format for iCalendar'
  (draft-ietf-jcardcal-jcal-10.txt) as Proposed Standard

This document is the product of the JSON data formats for vCard and
iCalendar Working Group.

The IESG contact persons are Pete Resnick and Barry Leiba.

A URL of this Internet Draft is:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-jcardcal-jcal/

Technical Summary

   This document defines an alternative representation for iCalendar
   data (RFC 5545), structured using the JSON data interchange format
   (RFC 4627). Defining this "jCal" representation for iCalendar allows
   easier integration of such data with web or other Javascript-based
   applications, and other JSON-based protocols being developed within
   the IETF.

   Because jCal is amenable to multiple technical implementations and
   interoperability testing, the document is Standards Track.

Working Group Summary

   There was no special controversy about this specification within the
   JCARDCAL WG, and in the shepherd's opinion both jCard and jCal are
   rather straightforward alternative representations of existing data
   models.  The two main points of focus in this work have been ensuring
   that the JSON representations use JSON in appropriate ways and are
   consistent with the existing textual and XML representations.  Much
   attention has been paid to these issues within the JCARDCAL WG, and
   the shepherd is satisfied that these considerations have been
   addressed in draft-ietf-jcardcal-jcal-08.

Document Quality

   The document emerged from discussion within the XML-JSON technical
   committee of the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium, where it
   experienced early review from at least three participants in that
   forum.  Upon adoption by the JCARDCAL WG, another half a dozen
   individuals reviewed and commented on the specification.

   Although it might appear that the document has not received "wide"
   review, the population of implementers interested in the topic is
   relatively small (only ~50 people are subscribed to the JCARDCAL WG
   discussion list). In addition, the jCal specification was preceded
   into WG Last Call, IETF Last Call, and IESG review by "jCard", a
   sister specification defining the JSON representation of vCard data. 
   As a result, many issues surrounding jCal were first ironed out
   through work on jCard (e.g., handling of unknown structured values),
   thus leading to fewer open issues related to jCal specifically.

   The calendaring and scheduling community is very interested in this
   specification, there are several implementations, and there is good
   consensus to advance the specification to Proposed Standard.

   All three of the authors have confirmed that they do not have direct,
   personal knowledge of any IPR related to this document.

   There are no IPR disclosures related to this document.

   According to the IDnits tool, there are no downward references.

   This document adds one entry to the iCalendar Data Types registry
   (parallel to the "UNKNOWN" entry already added to the vCard Value
   Data Types registry) and also registers a new media type
   "calendar+json". Review of the media type registration was requested
   on the media-types list on January 6, 2014:

 http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/media-types/current/msg00563.html

Personnel

   The shepherd for this document is Peter Saint-Andre.
   The responsible Area Director is Pete Resnick.