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iCalendar

iCalendar was created as an open source standard internet calendar format by the ietf so different applications could share and publish calendar events. iCalendar was designed to be independent of transport protocol. iCalendar's design was based on the previous file format vCalendar created by the Internet Mail Consortium (imc).

iCalendar is used/supported by including Google Calendar, Apple Calendar (formerly iCal), GoDaddy Online Group Calendar, IBM Lotus Notes, Yahoo! Calendar, Evolution (software), eM Client, Lightning extension for Mozilla Thunderbird and SeaMonkey, and partially by Microsoft Outlook and Novell GroupWise.

As the format continues to grow in popularity, many companies have chosen to use the iCalendar standard. Apple's iCal, a personal calendar application that runs on the Mac OS X operating system, is one of many programs that currently use this format. Others include Mozilla Sunbird and Microsoft Outlook.

iCalendar filename extensions: .ical, .ics, .ifb, .icalendar. Internet media type: text/calendar; Calendar Data Exchange Format.

iCalendar Standard

• The filename extension of "ics" is to be used to designate a file containing (an arbitrary set of) calendaring and scheduling information consistent with this MIME content type; .ics is for a full calendar file
• The filename extension of "ifb" is to be used to designate a file containing free or busy time information consistent with this MIME content type; .ifb is for availability information only files.
• The file type code of "iCal" is to be used in Apple Macintosh operating system environments to designate a file containing calendaring and scheduling information consistent with this MIME media type.
• The file type code of "iFBf" is to be used in Apple Macintosh operating system environments to designate a file containing free or busy time information consistent with this MIME media type.
• By default, iCalendar uses the UTF-8 character set; a different character set can be specified using the "charset" MIME parameter (if the transport method used supports MIME, such as Email or HTTP).
• Each line is terminated by CR+LF (in hexadecimal: 0D0A). Lines should be limited to 75 octets (not characters) long. Where a data item is too long to fit on a single line it can be continued on following lines by starting the continuation lines with a space character (in hex: 20) or a tab character (in hex: 09).
• Actual line feeds in data items are encoded as a backslash followed by the letter N (the bytes 5C 6E or 5C 4E in UTF-8). iCalendar data has the MIME content type text/calendar.

• About iCalendar
• iCalendar
• iCal
• Calendar (application)
• hCalendar
• hCalendar 1.0
• SabreDav is a WebDAV PHP Framework

iCalendar and OS X Calendar (formerly iCal)

While the names are similiar, Apple's iCal is not the same as iCalendar. iCal is a calendar application for Mac OS X, which has actually been renamed to Calendar.

Double clicking on a .ics file in os x should open up Calendar with a prompt asking the user which calendar they would like to import the event into.

Outlook and iCalendar

Microsoft Outlook 2007 and up are capable of exporting/importing events in iCalendar format; in fact, .ics is Outlook's default format for saving, exporting, and sharing.

outlook2ical is an export utility vb macro for exporting a set of appointments from an Outlook Calendar to iCalendar format.

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:-//XYZproduct//EN
VERSION:2.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
URL:http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/40/program.html
DTSTART:20051005
DTEND:20051008
SUMMARY:Web 2.0 Conference
LOCATION:Argent Hotel\, San Francisco\, CA
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

<div class="vevent">
 <a class="url" href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/40/program.html">
  http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/40/program.html
 </a>
 <span class="summary">Web 2.0 Conference</span>: 
 <abbr class="dtstart" title="2005-10-05">October 5</abbr>-
 <abbr class="dtend" title="2005-10-07">7</abbr>,
 at the <span class="location">Argent Hotel, San Francisco, CA</span>
</div>

<p>
Drag this link: 
<a id="copyhcalendar" class="favelet" 
title="Download hCalendar events from the current page to your calendar program." 
href="javascript:void(
location.href=
'http://h2vx.com/ics/'+escape(location.href))
">
Get hCalendar>/a<
to your browser's         
<i class="term">links toolbar 
<span class="info">
<b>(
</b>sometimes called a "Bookmarks Toolbar"<b>)
</b></span></i> 
and download hCalendar events from webpages you're viewing by clicking it in your toolbar.</p>

<p>And drag this link: 
<a 
id="subhcalendar" 
class="favelet" 
title="Subscribe to hCalendar events from the current page in your calendar program." 
href="
javascript:void(
location.href=
'webcal://h2vx.com/ics/'+escape(location.href))"
>Subscribe to hCalendar</a>
to your links toolbar and one-click subscribe to hCalendar events from webpages  to your calendar program.
</p>