Event Links

[Frank Dawson <fdawson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The concept of event links may have a couple of impacts to our work. I am in 
somewhat agreement though with Jay Batson. This capability may be more a 
capability of a specific product, rather than a feature/function of an IETF 
calendaring standard.

Using the term "link" to mean a "thread" of related events, we might see no 
feature/function in the standard, but instead use the text of the SUMMARY 
property of an event to perform "threading" of related events within the 
calendar product. An alternative approach would be to add a RELATIONAL 
IDENTIFIER property to an event or todo object. This would allow related events 
and todo objects to refer to the same identifier. The identifier would probably 
want to be a GUID. The former is a loose coupling of the concept. The latter 
involves a tighter coupling of the concept.

Using the term "link" in its more current semantic, cross event referencing can 
be achieved using an URL property, as is done in the vCalendar specification. 
Alternately, if every event can be identified by a GUID type of reference 
identifier, then another event can refer to it merely by putting that GUID as a 
value in a LINK REFERENCE property. This would provide for a chaining of 
related events. Traditional approches would be used to refer to end of the 
linked list or a circularly linked list. 

Cheers.

- - Frank Dawson