RE[2]: MIME as a vCalendar element separator - bad move...

[izzy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Dr. Mark K. Joseph)]

On Fri, 6 Dec 1996 15:54:41 -0800
"Mark Horton" <mark@lucent.com> wrote:

>In the case of MIME, it's a good mail encapsulation format and an excellent
>attachment format.  But it's overkill for calendar events where a simple
>BEGIN will do.  If we use MIME we run the risk of confusing mail programs
>that might think they have to understand the internals of the calendar
>application format.  This makes about as much sense as requiring Word 8
>to use MIME to separate the various parts of the document.
>

After thinking this over a bit I have to agree with this argument.
All the calendar data is specific to one particular application.  It
just happens that we are sending that calendar data via mail and MIME.
The mail client/server should not know or care about the applications
data and data format.

An obvious example of this is "application/postscript", my mailer does
not care about postscript.  My mailer invokes a helper application
to view the file.

Breaking the vCalendar or vCard stuff up into MIME format will only
increase complexity and buys us nothing.

Mark Joseph
Emissary Development Group