Re: Status of the CALSCH working group (Alarms/SEQUENCE)

["G. Barnes" <gsbarnes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 Bruce_Kahn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> I have yet to hear any good justification for allowing "identical but
> separate" VALARMs that match any practical view of things.  Despite Dougs
> and Marks claim, the only reason to have SEQUENCE (or ALARMID) on VALARMs
> is for this rare usage case that currently noone actually has nor models
> anyones actual behaviour or needs.  Id like to apply KISS to this and move
> CAP along...  (Just like we disallow multiple copies of the same booked
> entry, the same should go for alarms).

Two responses:

1) To move CAP along, I think we have to concede that the question of
unique ids for VALARMs was already considered, and unique ids were
considered good by almost everyone.  From the archive, it appears this
was most heavily discussed November 2001-January 2002, and everyone
seemed to agree that alarmids of some sort were useful.  For example, from:

<http://www.imc.org/ietf-calendar/mail-archive/msg02317.html>

Steve Mansour wrote:
}I agree.  I think it is far simpler to just always add the alarmid.
}I'll make the update. If anyone has any objections let's go through it
}on the list.  (we can always pull it out later if someone comes up with
}a good reason for NOT having an alarm id).

[Needless to say, no one had any objections and no one came up with
such a reason that I could see.]

2) As for what's the use of duplicate alarms, what if I want to send
myself 20 e-mail messages to make sure I get the hint?  Or have 5 windows
opening with blinking text?  Who are we to say what a user might think is
useful?

                        Greg Barnes
                        Computing and Communications, University of Washington
                        gsbarnes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                        (206) 685-3295