Abstract

There is a clear need to provide and deploy interoperable calendaring and scheduling services for the Internet. Current group scheduling and Personal Information Management (PIM) products are being extended for use across the Internet, today, in proprietary ways. This memo has been defined to provide the definition of a common format for openly exchanging calendaring and scheduling information across the Internet. This memo is formatted as a registration for a MIME media type per RFC 2048. However, the format in this memo is equally applicable for use outside of a MIME message content type. The proposed media type value is 'text/calendar'. This string would label a media type containing calendaring and scheduling information encoded as text characters formatted in a manner outlined below. This MIME media type provides a standard content type for capturing calendar event, to-do and journal entry information. It also can be used to convey free/busy time information. The content type is suitable as a MIME message entity that can be transferred over MIME based email systems, using HTTP or some other Internet transport. In addition, the content type is useful as an object for interactions between desktop applications using the operating system clipboard, drag/drop or file systems capabilities. This memo is based on the earlier work of the vCalendar specification for the exchange of personal calendaring and scheduling information. In order to avoid confusion with this referenced work, this memo is to be known as the iCalendar specification. This memo defines the format for specifying iCalendar object methods. An iCalendar object method is a set of usage constraints for the iCalendar object. For example, these methods might define scheduling messages that request an event be scheduled, reply to an event request, send a cancellation notice for an event, modify or replace the definition of an event, provide a counter proposal for an original event request, delegate an event request to another individual, request free or busy time, reply to a free or busy time request, or provide similar scheduling messages for a to-do or journal entry calendar component. The iCalendar Transport-indendent Interoperability Protocol (iTIP) defined in ITIP is one such scheduling protocol.

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