News on XML iCalendar

There may be a new standard for the iCalendar XML mapping on the way. It is part of W3C’s HTML5 proposal! It is a new concept called microdata and there is an example for vEvent here.

The current proposal for HTML5 is scheduled to go on last call (before becoming a recommendation) in October. However, the very introduction of microdata may block HTML5 from going to last call in October as stated at the top of the page.

HTML5 is not XML but XHTML5 is and this the same specification.

XHTML5 is potentially the most influential XML standard in the making – by a very far cry. If this microdata concept and the vevent example make it to that standard then there is a good chance that this format will become the no-way-around standard for encoding iCalendar in XML.

The timing is rather bad. I would not bet anything on W3C making HTML5 a recommendation any time soon, but you never know. Yet we want to get 1.1 out rather sooner than later. Now even if W3C takes its time we may want to check whether Mozilla and/or WebKit (i.e. Safari and Chrome) are taking that up on that and doing something with microdata (those browsers made canvas a de facto standard even though that also should wait for HTML5 maturity).

Whatever we do, we should give microdata a good look and reconsider our “standard”.

Regards

Thorsten

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