Re: various bits of code

[Detlev Zundel]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> wrote:

> Should we consider icalendar.el for inclusion in Emacs?

I'd like to see something with its functionality inside Emacs, yes.
It should be better integrated however before it will be useful for
more people.

> Could you summarize briefly what job it does?

Sure.  From the source:

;;  icalendar.el aims at providing an implementation of the iCalendar
;;  standard as defined in "RFC 2445 -- Internet Calendaring and
;;  Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar)".

As an interchange format between calendar applications, the iCalendar
standard would allow us diary users to connect to other iCal
applications and to create and react to emails having such content.

Especially the recent Mozilla Calendar plugin can work with this
format so Emacs diary users could connect to it.  As Mozilla Calendar
allows to access remote calendar files this is very interesting for
teams to share their schedules.

The current implementation can export a complete diary file into an
iCal file and translate most iCal records into diary syntax from a
buffer or a file.

On the todo list is a synchronization method via http.  Perhaps
someone would pick up this interesting feature and implement it once
such code is in the Emacs release.

I should state that the code is apparently in an early stage however:

(defconst icalendar-version 0.05
  "Version number of icalendar.el.
Version 0.05 is a pre-alpha release!")


Cheers
  Detlev

-- 
Once the  implementation is  up and running,  it is still a trick to keep it
running.  In a normal,  closed implementation,  this is not a problem;  in a
system with metaobject protocols [..] there is the potential for spectacular
failure modes if certain situations are not properly anticipated.
                                       -- The Art of the Metaobject Protocol