Subject: [Tzdist] iCal RFC 5545 -> xCal RFC 6321 -> jCal

From: Tobias Conradi <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 17:20:20 +0200

There is a representation for time zone data in iCal.
PROPOSED STANDARD
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5545

There is a transformation into xCal
PROPOSED STANDARD
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6321

>From there I would choose among standard transformations from XML to
JSON to get to jCal.

Douglass and Daboo, which are the authors of the two draft documents
which might be the basis for the work of tzdist are the authors for
RFC 6321. What is the reason for the latter to be only "proposed"? Is
it because of RFC 5545 being only "proposed".

Then, I would think to have tzdist defining a subset of a jCal format
could mean to not be compatible with an upcoming jCal standard.

-- 
Tobias Conradi
Rheinsberger Str. 18
10115 Berlin
Germany

http://tobiasconradi.com

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From: Cyrus Daboo <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 11:43:45 -0400

Hi Tobias,

> could mean to not be compatible with an upcoming jCal standard.

jCal has already been published: RFC7265. The current tzdist draft allows 
arbitrary formats to be delivered provided they are "tagged" with a MIME 
type. There are already several implementations of the current draft done 
by folks involved in the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium (CalConnect 
- http://calconnect.org) and we have those working with iCalendar, xCal and 
jCal. We've been doing interop testing at the face-to-face CalConnect 
meetings.

As far as what "PROPOSED" means you should probably look at Section 2.2 of 
<http://www.ietf.org/about/process-docs.html> and follow the links there to 
understand the IETF status levels.

-- 
Cyrus Daboo

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From: Tobias Conradi <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 18:18:54 +0200

On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 5:43 PM, Cyrus Daboo <[email-masked]> wrote:
> jCal has already been published: RFC7265.
Thank you. Nice to see that a jCal RFC exists.

Referring to a standard xml2json transformation instead of describing
the transformation from iCal to jCal would have meant a smaller jCal
RFC.

Now it seems not even clear whether that can be done, without
comparing all iCal->xCal and iCal->jCal transformations.

Are you aware of a standard xml2json transformation that could convert
between the two?

I have seen some json examples in one of the tzdist draft documents,
so I assume understanding of jCal has some relevance to tzdist.

-- 
Tobias Conradi
Rheinsberger Str. 18
10115 Berlin
Germany

http://tobiasconradi.com

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From: Cyrus Daboo <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 12:25:26 -0400

Hi Tobias,

> so I assume understanding of jCal has some relevance to tzdist.

I am not sure many implementors need to go direct from xCal into jCal. 
Rather, what most iCalendar libraries do is parse whatever representation 
they are given (text, xCal, jCal) into an internal "object model" and then 
serialize that back out to whatever format is required (after doing what 
they need to with the data). So the most important aspect of these 
representations is that they accurately represent the overall iCalendar 
object model - direct conversions between them was not seen as a key factor.

-- 
Cyrus Daboo