Subject: [Ietf-calsify] Propose to close issue 36 - X-Name / bilateral agreements

From: lear at cisco.com (Eliot Lear)
Date: Fri Sep 8 03:15:22 2006

No consensus for change as of now.

Barring more discussion, the text will remain unchanged, without
reference to bilateral agreements.

Eliot

36
	X-name

 > x-name             = "X-" [vendorid "-"] 1*(ALPHA / DIGIT / "-")
 > ; Reserved for non-standard names. Can be used by bilateral
 > ; agreement.

	No consensus on what bilateral means in this context.

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From: sroberts at uniserve.com (Sam Roberts)
Date: Fri Sep 8 09:45:51 2006

> reference to bilateral agreements.

What X- fields mean and whether to allow them was beat to a bloody death
during rfc2822, but they got rid of X- fields, so iCal can't copy their
text!

I don't want to keep the issue open if the consensus is that te text is
fine, but I think including recommendations on use of a feature is
helpful for interoperability, so can I propose:

  Vendor-defined names may appear in iCalendar by using a naming pattern
  guaranteed not to conflict with any names that may be standardized in
  the future. There is no registry for vendorid, so there is no
  guarantee names defined by one vendor won't conflict with names
  defined by another.

I think that describes why it's here, and you/we could perhaps add some
guidance:

  Vendors SHOULD NOT use vendor-defined names in iTIP, it discourages
  inter-operability. If a vendor finds it necessary to extend iCal with
  vendor-defined names, it is recommended to submit a <RFC? how do you
  say this?> to the <IETF??> to standardize this usage with a non-vendor
  defined name. Some vendors use iCalendar as a internal storage
  format, and vendor-defined names are useful in this context, but
  SHOULD be removed before exchanging the calendars with other
  implementations.

I think the above is the "well-known understanding" of X- fields, if the
list agrees, I'd like to see it written down.

I don't like the use of "vendor", btw, what if the implementation
isn't vended? :-) How about s/vendor/implementation/g?

Cheers,
Sam