Calendar Standards:
vCalendar  A standard that dates back to 1996, vCal is a basic electronic calendaring and scheduling exchange format. It was developed by the Versit Consortium, whose key members included Apple, AT&T, IBM and Siemens. VCal traditionally has been used in handheld devices and mobile phones.
iCalendar  iCal outlines a common format for the exchange of calendaring and scheduling information across the Internet. A product of the Internet Engineering Task Force, iCal was published as a standards track document in 1998. The IETF also published two companion protocols in 1998: iTIP, which specifies how calendaring systems use iCal objects to interoperate with other calendaring systems; and iMIP, which specifies a binding between iTIP and Internet e-mail transports. The iCal protocols offer basic calendaring interoperability such as sending, receiving and responding to meeting invites among users of different calendaring software. ICal has gained support across the messaging industry since it became available in Outlook 2002, which shipped last summer.
Calendar Access Protocol  A companion to iCal, CAP is the key missing link in calendaring interoperability across the Internet. The IETF has worked on CAP for several years, but has not yet finalized it. CAP lets a calendar user use a calendar user agent to access an iCAL-based calendar store. CAP offers advanced calendaring support, including the ability to query, create, modify and delete iCal events, and it specifies how to search for available free time. Authors of the CAP drafts include engineers from AOL/Netscape and Steltor.
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