[Ietf-calsify] Re: What's wrong with more radical simplification?

[Helge Hess]

On 11. Feb 2005, at 18:30 Uhr, Reinhold Kainhofer wrote:
> I think it basically boils down to the two views of standards:
> 1) A standard should describe what every application MUST implement. 
> If an
> application wants to do something more, it's on its own. ("lowest 
> common
> denominator")
> 2) A standard gives a suggestion how an application might implement 
> any (even
> very exotic) feature. No application will ever implement full support 
> for
> every little detail of such a standard, but if it implements one 
> feature, it
> can be sure that any other application that implements a similar 
> feature will
> be able to reuse the data.

I think this is painted rather black and white which is not how it 
needs to be. As mentioned there can be extensions and things like 
rrules and timezones certainly make a lot of sense.

But to have interoperability (aka a _standard_) you MUST agree on 
certain blocks of functionality. I can't see how a standard can work 
otherwise.

Your example of "if it implements one feature, it can be sure that any 
other application that implements a similar feature will be able to 
reuse the data" is obviously wrong, because this other application will 
not understand some other obscure feature you are using in the same 
iCalendar entity.

> it seems most people here think that a standard is just for those 
> parts that
> every application must implement (i.e. every detail of a standard 
> needs to be
> supported by an application).

Well, I would say thats the core definition of the word "standard" and 
not the "thinking" of the people here ;-)

> However, what I like so much about iCalendar is that it gives you a
> standardized way for lots of advanced features.

Si, iCalendar currently seems to be more like a framework to choose 
implementation suggestions from, less an actual standard (which someone 
is really compliant with). I thought the goal of calsify was to fix 
exactly this situation.

Greets,
   Helge
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