On Feb 11, 2005, at 9:20 AM, Mimi Yin wrote:
Would it be too confusing to just say Import / Export calendar events. I'm
wondering if iCalendar is confusing since it refers to both the format and
the Apple calendar? And perhaps neither is particularly well-known to
laypeople?
We need to distinguish between import/export (which to me implies a one-time reading-from/writing-to a local file) and an ongoing subscription/publish of a remote collection of items. Sub/pub will get updated each time you "Sync All".
As for format, there are actually three ways that calendar events can end up being formatted when shared:
A) a monolithic .ics file (which Apple iCal understands)
B) CalDAV's .ics-file-per-event style (not yet fully implemented in Chandler)
C) Chandler's generic CloudXML format (which gets used during regular collection sharing)
I agree we need to keep it as simple as possible for the user, so let's outline the various operations that can be performed, and figure out the nomenclature:
1) Export a collection of Events to a local .ics file -- one time operation
2) Import Events from a local .ics file -- one time operation
3) Publish a collection of Events to an .ics file on a WebDAV server -- this collection will get re-published during "Sync All", and is a "one way" share, "put" only
4) Subscribe to an .ics file on a webserver -- this collection will get re-fetched during "Sync All", and is a "one way" share, "get" only
5) Sharing a collection via the invitation process, which puts an XML-formatted collection of resources on a WebDAV server, participates in "Sync All", and is a "two way" share, "get" and "put"
For #1, #3, and #5, should operate on the currently selected collection in the sidebar. #5 is already handled with the 'Collection -> Share' menu and the green arrow button.
Does everyone agree that "import" and "export" imply one-time, local file operations, while "publish" and "subscribe" imply ongoing (probably remote) operations? Better terminology welcomed, but I hope that the user will be able to select any of the 1-4 operations above via some set of menu items. #3 and #4 make for really cool demos, too. :-)
Eventually there will be operation #6: publish my calendar to a CalDAV server...
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