Re: ICal Core Spec V7 -- Binary Attachments

[Mark Baker <distobj@xxxxxxx>]

>Based
>on the current spec, I just don't see the mechanism in place to do this.

Right.  We haven't yet built this functionality, but had identified this
problem.  We were expecting to have to do some basic magic number
identification for gif, jpeg, and wav, once the binary chunk had been decoded.

I like the vCard 3.0 suggestion;

         PHOTO;ENCODING=b;TYPE=JPEG:MIICajCCAdOgAwIBAgICBEUwDQYJKoZIhvcN
         AQEEBQAwdzELMAkGA1UEBhMCVVMxLDAqBgNVBAoTI05ldHNjYXBlIENvbW11bm
         ljYXRpb25zIENvcnBvcmF0aW9uMRwwGgYDVQQLExNJbmZvcm1hdGlvbiBTeXN0
         <...remainder of "B" encoded binary data...>

though I'd prefer that it be "TYPE=image/jpeg".  It would also be nice to
see vCard and iCalendar use the same conventions on top of the grammar.
The bulk of it is similar, as my combo vCard/iCalendar parser demonstrates
(though not entirely complete at this point).  But there's still some
quirks like the given binary attachment example, and vCard's "AGENT"
property which embeds another vCard by value.

I wonder if it was a goal of the groups that worked on these specs (Frank
is an author on both) to be able to use a single parser?

MB
--
Mark Baker.               CTO, Beduin Communications Corp
Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA             http://www.beduin.com