Subject: Re: Event owner in ICAL schema

From: "John Stracke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 09:36:34 -0500

>If the object is private to the user calendar and will NOT be
>distributed to anyone else

Yeah, but consider what happens if the object is modified to invite 
someone.  It seems sort of, mmm, non-orthogonal, to say that you MUST add 
the ORGANIZER when the first person is invited, and remove it when the 
last invitee is removed.  Why not have ORGANIZER on it all the time?

>that is outside the scope of all
>of iCalendar, iTIP, iMIP, and CAP - as there would not be a
>need for interoperability.

Not necessarily; you might use iCalendar format to export it to another 
CUA for the same CU.

/===============================================================\
|John Stracke                    |Principal Engineer            |
[email-masked]   |Incentive Systems, Inc.       |
|http://www.incentivesystems.com |My opinions are my own.       |
|===============================================================|
|The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where|
|to go to erase it.                                             |
\===============================================================/

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From: Doug Royer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2002 12:05:49 -0700

> last invitee is removed.  Why not have ORGANIZER on it all the time?

Yes - but still not for VFREEBUSY or VTIMESZONE, (others?).

> Not necessarily; you might use iCalendar format to export it to another

Yes - then X- is still used.

I was not saying that you can not use X-. 

I was saying that IF it is never exported - who cares how
it is done and if it is never expoerted - then it is out of scope.

---

From: "Shannon J. Clark" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 12:58:54 -0600

I agree - the exact relationship required to map a USER to the data for that
user's calendar has always been somewhat confusing... and where to store
that data gets further complicated.

As I understand it we have a number of separate "issues" at stake - and what
feels like very differing perceptions as to how to deal with them.

One - User runs a calendar application (called CUA) - this may be running on
a local to the user device.

Two - the CUA connects to a CS to retrieve the data to show as the user's
calendar. There may be more than one CS involved (for example a "local" cs
for use when not networked, and a networked CS that is the permanent
repository of data). --- this does NOT require that ANY scheduling is
performed - there are security and access reasons for a networked CS that do
not involve scheduling.

Now comes some of the linguistic areas of confusion.

First - does the "user" have ONE or more then ONE calendars to deal with? If
more than one - what "defines" the user? What maps the association of
multiple calendars to that particular user?

Second - in the above questions does "calendar" associate with VCALENDAR? or
to VAGENDA? or something else?

Third - how is the "user" defined such that the CUA and CS "know" how to
differentiate one user from another? - and how to associate the right set of
information (and access rights etc) with a particular user?

Four - what is the "owner" vs. the "organizer" difference intended for?

Five - how does the CUA, CS (and perhaps the user) "know" that workflow
is/is not involved? Furthermore why should this matter - i.e. why should the
standard behave differently when only one user is involved vs. when multiple
users may be? - and would cases of one user but multiple CUA trigger the
requirements for "workflow"? (for example a need to keep three different
calendar tools in sync - which seems like a very very reasonable
requirement.

Finally - since it is confusing - could someone map through the various
standards and show the specific data elements are areas that are involved in
defining a given user, the data for that user, and how that user gets that
data. With the related question of how to add new data - i.e. what a CUA has
to do (and has to know) in order to generate a new object for that user's
data collection.

thanks,

Shannon

- yes these are perhaps basic questions - but clearly our current
explanations result in confusion - and a confusion that I think is
indicative of a gap between people who have been doing it one way - and
people who are trying to work outward from the standards to a solution. This
indicates to me that something is missing from the standards documents that
explains this gap in knowledge and assumptions.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked]
[mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf Of John Stracke
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2002 8:37 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Event owner in ICAL schema