Subject: Re: ALARMID to VALARM after stored?

From: "John Stracke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 10:35:38 -0500

>> Top-level VALARMs, though, are *not* a minor change.  You're moving 
from
>> searching for a VALARM within the VEVENT to searching within the 
VEVENT's
>> container.  Your VEVENT cannot then be passed to a non-CAP 
implementation
>> (say, via iMIP) without transforming it.
>
>The required transformation would be pretty straightforward.

Depends on your internal data representation for your iCalendar objects. 
In any event, the cost of the transformation is definitely greater than 
zero.  You have not established that the benefits of top-level VALARMs are 
greater than zero (I still maintain that the benefits are negative).

>Furthermore, in most cases you should
>probably not send the VALARM to the other attendees.  What's the
>point of sending your VALARM to other people?

Aside from the points Doug's already made: iTIP is not the only way, other 
than CAP, to use iCalendar.  Maybe I just want to export a VEVENT to a 
file, or a PDA.  My Nokia cellphone, for example, uses [iv]Calendar to 
send and receive calendar entries via SMS; if AT&T's email-to-SMS gateway 
recognized text/calendar, I could send the VEVENT to my phone.

>A CUA could easily remind the CU about the impact of changing a
>VALARM referenced by other VALARMs before sending the "modify"
>command to the CAP server.;

Rule of thumb for usability: don't let the user make mistakes.  Warning 
the user when they're about to make a mistake does not cut it.

/=============================================================\
|John Stracke                   |Principal Engineer           |
[email-masked]  |Incentive Systems, Inc.      |
|http://www.incentivesystems.com|My opinions are my own.      |
|=============================================================|
|The cheapest, fastest, most reliable components of a computer|
|system are those that aren't there.--Gordon Bell             |
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