- From: Libby Miller <Libby.Miller@bristol.ac.uk>
- Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 13:50:14 +0100 (BST)
- To: www-rdf-calendar@w3.org
- cc: d.m.steer@lse.ac.uk
Hi all, This list has been very quiet recently, partly because lots of people have been at W10. I'd like to get some ideas flowing on this list now that people are getting back. I want to start with a biggie: Why do we need RDF calendaring and scheduling? I've been reading a lot of rfcs about iCalendar and there are a lot of products already using the IETF's iCalendar[1] format and protocols, such as Outlook Express, Netscape Communicator Professional and Palm. Basically, the interchange format of iCalendar is just fine for most calendaring and scheduling purposes. The IETF have spent a great deal of time and effort getting it right. It wouldn't be very useful simply to convert iCalendar into XML. Is there any point in converting it to RDF? Well (you might argue) RDF can give you * extensibility (but iCalendar is extensible) * unique identifiers (but iCalendar uses email addresses and urls to identify people and locations) * tools for parsing (RDF tools are not mature; XML tools are more mature; iCalendar tools are very mature) I've been thinking about this and chatting with Dan Brickley and Jan Grant among others. I'd agree with Dan that the answer lies in the connections we can make with other kinds of data if we are able to convert iCalendar to RDF. One example might be: I'm learning about SMIL; I find the W3C recommendation for SMIL; from this document and other RDF documents on the W3C site and elsewhere I can find meetings at which the document was produced and altered. I can then find out who attended the meetings and more about their connections and affiliations from other RDF databases such as RDFWeb. I can also find other documents that were inputs to the meetings and also other outputs from the meetings such as minutes and photos. Much of this data is already available on the web. Putting all these types of information, including meetings and other events in an RDF calendar format connects up this information to make my life easier when I start doing research on SMIL. Putting calendar information in RDF is only a part of the project of putting all these different kinds of information in RDF. any thoughts? Libby [1] IETF Calendaring and Scheduling (calsch) WG http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/calsch-charter.html (see links at the bottom for calendar-related RFCs)
Received on Monday, 7 May 2001 08:51:01 UTC