iCalendar Format Extensions for JSCalendar
draft-ietf-calext-icalendar-jscalendar-extensions-05

calext                                                       R. Stepanek
Internet-Draft                                                  Fastmail
Updates: 5545, 7986, 9073 (if approved)                  19 January 2026
Intended status: Standards Track                                        
Expires: 23 July 2026

               iCalendar Format Extensions for JSCalendar
          draft-ietf-calext-icalendar-jscalendar-extensions-05

Abstract

   This document defines a set of new elements for iCalendar and extends
   the use of existing ones.  Their main purpose is to extend the
   semantics of iCalendar with elements defined in JSCalendar, but the
   new definitions also aim to be useful within just the iCalendar
   format.  This document updates RFC 5545 ("iCalendar") and its
   extension documents RFC 7986 and RFC 9073.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on 23 July 2026.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
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   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Notational Conventions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.2.  ABNF Notations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Updated Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  GEO Property  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.2.  COLOR Property  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Updated Components  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.1.  VLOCATION component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  New Properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.1.  COORDINATES Property  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.2.  SHOW-WITHOUT-TIME Property  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  New Values  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     5.1.  OWNER Participation Role  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     7.1.  Changes to the "Components" registry  . . . . . . . . . .   8
     7.2.  Changes to the "Properties" registry  . . . . . . . . . .   8
     7.3.  Changes to the "Participation Roles" registry . . . . . .   9
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   9.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Introduction

   The JSCalendar [I-D.stepanek-jscalendarbis] format aims to be an
   alternative to the iCalendar [RFC5545] format for representation of
   calendaring data.  It introduces new semantics that are not covered
   in the current definition of iCalendar and its various extensions.
   Converting calendaring data between the two formats is defined in
   [I-D.ietf-calext-jscalendar-icalendar] with the goal of not losing
   any semantics during conversion.  To achieve this, this document
   defines new elements iCalendar and extends existing definitions.  To
   do so, it follows the recommendations for introducing new iCalendar
   elements as specified in Section 3 of [RFC7986].  This document
   updates the definitions of the GEO property [RFC5545]
   (Section 3.8.1.6), the COLOR property [RFC7986] (Section 5.9) and the

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   VLOCATION component [RFC9073] (Section 7.2).

1.1.  Notational Conventions

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

1.2.  ABNF Notations

   The ABNF definitions in this document use the notations of [RFC5234].
   ABNF rules not defined in this document are defined in either
   [RFC5234] (such as the ABNF for CRLF, WSP, DQUOTE, VCHAR, ALPHA, and
   DIGIT) or [RFC5545].

2.  Updated Properties

2.1.  GEO Property

   This specification deprecates the "GEO" property and introduces the
   "COORDINATES" (Section 4.1) property to replace it.  Implementations
   SHOULD NOT use the "GEO" property to represent spatial coordinates.
   Instead, they SHOULD specify the "COORDINATES" property in a
   "VLOCATION" component [RFC9073] (Section 7.2).  They MAY additionally
   specify a "GEO" property in a "VEVENT" or "VTODO" component, in which
   case its "DERIVED" parameter [RFC9073] (Section 5.3) MUST have value
   "TRUE".

   The remainder of this section documents the rationale for deprecating
   the "GEO" property:

   The "GEO" property definition dates back to 1998, a time at which
   multiple internet protocols and data formats incorporated spatial
   coordinates in slightly different formats, making interoperability
   difficult.  This got addressed in 2010 in [RFC5870], which introduced
   a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) for geographic locations.  The
   'geo' URI scheme not only improves interoperability but also allows
   for richer information than the "GEO" property value, e.g. it
   supports specifying the location altitude and the spatial uncertainty
   of the coordinates.

   Alternatively to deprecating, this specification could have updated
   the "GEO" property to allow its property value type to be URI.  This
   turned out to not interoperate, as implementations tended to reject
   such iCalendar data as invalid.  This was regardless if the "GEO"
   property was specified in a "VEVENT" component, or if it was

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   specified in iCalendar components that were unsupported by the
   implementation (e.g. an implementation that was unaware of the
   "VLOCATION" component still rejected the "GEO" property with value
   type URI in that component as invalid).  Introducing a new property
   turned out to better interoperate with such systems.

2.2.  COLOR Property

   This specification modifies the definition of the "COLOR" property,
   it allows its value to be a named color or a numeric color.  The
   following definitions replace the definitions of the "COLOR"
   property, originally specified in Section 5.9 of [RFC7986] from which
   the definitions for "Description", "Format Definition" and "Example"
   differ.

   Property Name:  COLOR

   Purpose:  This property specifies a color used for displaying the
      calendar, event, todo, or journal data.

   Value Type:  TEXT

   Property Parameters:  IANA and non-standard property parameters can
      be specified on this property.

   Conformance:  This property can be specified once in an iCalendar
      object or in "VEVENT", "VTODO", or "VJOURNAL" calendar components.

   Description:  This property specifies a color that clients MAY use
      when presenting the relevant data to a user.  Typically, this
      would appear as the "background" color of events or tasks.  The
      value is a color name taken from the set of names defined in
      Section 4.3 of [CSS3] or an RGB value in six-digit hexadecimal
      notation, as defined in Section 4.2.1 of [CSS3].  Values are case-
      insensitive.

   Format Definition:  This property is defined by the following
      notation:

      color       = "COLOR" colorparam ":" text CRLF
                    ; Value is CSS3 color name or CSS3 six-digit RGB hex value.

      colorparam     = *(";" other-param)

   Example:  The following are examples of this property:

      COLOR:turquoise

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      COLOR:#40E0D0

      COLOR:#ffd755

3.  Updated Components

3.1.  VLOCATION component

   This document updates the definition of the "VLOCATION" component.
   It allows to specify the newly defined "COORDINATES" property
   (Section 4.1) at most once in a "VLOCATION" component.  It appends
   the following to the "Format Definition" of the "VLOCATION"
   component, defined in Section 7.2 of [RFC9073]:

   locprop /= *(
               ;
               ; The following is OPTIONAL
               ; but MUST NOT occur more than once.
               ;
               coord
               ;
               )

   The "coord" ABNF is defined in Section 4.1.

4.  New Properties

4.1.  COORDINATES Property

   Property Name:  COORDINATES

   Purpose:  To represent a geographic location using the protocol-
      independent, extensible "geo" URI scheme.

   Value Type:  URI -- no default

   Property Parameters:  IANA and non-standard parameters MAY be
      specified on this property.

   Conformance:  This property can be specified in a "VLOCATION"
      calendar component.

   Description:  This property represents spatial (geographic)
      coordinates.  In contrast to the the "GEO" property, this property
      allows to represent not only latitude and longitude but also
      altitude of a location.  In addition, it supports to indicate the
      uncertainty of the coordinates, is interoperable with other
      internet standards making use of spatial information, and is

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      extensible, such as for use with other coordinate reference
      systems.  The property value MUST a URI in the "geo" URI scheme,
      as defined in [RFC5870] and updates.

   Format Definition:
      coord       = "COORDINATES" coordparam ":" uri CRLF

      coordparam  = *(
                     ;
                     ; The following is REQUIRED,
                     ; but MUST NOT occur more than once.
                     ;
                     (";" "VALUE" "=" "URI") /
                     ;
                     ; The following is OPTIONAL,
                     ; and MAY occur more than once.
                     ;
                     (";" other-param)
                     ;
                     )

   Example:  The following is an example of this property:

      COORDINATES;VALUE=URI:geo:48.198634,16.371648;crs=wgs84;u=40

4.2.  SHOW-WITHOUT-TIME Property

   Property Name:  SHOW-WITHOUT-TIME

   Purpose:  To indicate that the exact time span is not important when
      displaying this calendar object.

   Value Type:  BOOLEAN -- no default

   Property Parameters:  IANA and non-standard parameters can be
      specified on this property.

   Conformance:  This property can be specified in a "VEVENT" or "VTODO"
      calendar component.

   Description:  This indicates that the exact time span is not

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      important to display when rendering this calendar object.  An
      example of this is an event that occurs over a full or almost full
      day, but in contrast to a DATE value is limited to a specific time
      zone or business hours.  While the time component is important for
      free-busy calculations and checking for scheduling clashes,
      calendars may choose to display it as an all-day event, or display
      the object separately to other objects to enhance the user's view
      of their schedule.

      This property only is for presentation purposes, it does not have
      any impact on the temporal span or value type of a calendar
      object.

      This property MAY be specified on VEVENT components where the
      DTSTART property is of type DATE-TIME, or in VTODO components
      where either the DTSTART or DUE property is specified and has type
      DATE-TIME.  In all other cases it MUST NOT be set.  If this
      property is set, its property value MUST be "TRUE", e.g. it MUST
      be omitted rather than having value "FALSE".

      Implementations that are unaware of the "SHOW-WITHOUT-TIME"
      property might inadvertently preserve this property when changing
      a calendar object's temporal type from DATE-TIME to DATE.
      Implementations SHOULD therefore ignore rather than reject the
      incorrectly specified SHOW-WITHOUT-TIME property.  They MUST NOT
      preserve the ill-specified property in the calendaring data.

   Format Definition:
      showwt      = "SHOW-WITHOUT-TIME" showwtparam ":" "TRUE" CRLF

      showwtparam = *(
                     ;
                     ; The following is REQUIRED,
                     ; but MUST NOT occur more than once.
                     ;
                     (";" "VALUE" "=" "BOOLEAN") /
                     ;
                     ; The following is OPTIONAL,
                     ; and MAY occur more than once.
                     ;
                     (";" other-param)
                     ;
                     )

   Example:
      SHOW-WITHOUT-TIME;VALUE=BOOLEAN:TRUE

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5.  New Values

5.1.  OWNER Participation Role

   Value:  OWNER

   Purpose:  This participation role indicates that the calendar user is
      an owner of the calendar object.  This signifies they can make
      changes that affect all calendar users participating in this
      calendar object (for example, rescheduling the calendar object,
      adding and removing attendees and roles).  The presence of this
      role only is indicative, its semantics are subject to the
      calendaring exchange protocol being used.  See [jmap-calendars]
      for an example for making use of this role.

   Conformance:  This value can be used with the "ROLE" parameter.

   Example(s):
      ATTENDEE;ROLE=OWNER;RSVP=TRUE:mailto:jsmith@example.com

6.  Security Considerations

   This specification extends [RFC5545].  The same security
   considerations as outlined in Section 7 of [RFC5545] apply.

7.  IANA Considerations

   IANA will update the "iCalendar Element Registries" as follows.

7.1.  Changes to the "Components" registry

   IANA will update the entry of the "VLOCATION" component: it will add
   Section 3.1 of this document to the References.

7.2.  Changes to the "Properties" registry

   IANA will change the entry for the "GEO" property: it will set the
   Status from "Current" to "Deprecated" and add Section 2.1 of this
   document to the References.

   IANA will change the entry for the "COLOR" property: tt will add
   Section 2.2 of this document to the References.

   IANA will add the following entries:

   Property  COORDINATES
   Status  Current
   Reference  Section 4.1

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   Property  SHOW-WITHOUT-TIME
   Status  Current
   Reference  Section 4.2

7.3.  Changes to the "Participation Roles" registry

   IANA will add the following entry:

   Role Type  OWNER
   Status  Current
   Reference  Section 5.1

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [CSS3]     Çelik, T., Lilley, C., and L. Baron, "CSS Color Module
              Level 3", W3C Recommendation, January 2022,
              <https://www.w3.org/TR/css-color-3/>.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC5234]  Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
              Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5234, January 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5234>.

   [RFC5545]  Desruisseaux, B., Ed., "Internet Calendaring and
              Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar)",
              RFC 5545, DOI 10.17487/RFC5545, September 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5545>.

   [RFC5870]  Mayrhofer, A. and C. Spanring, "A Uniform Resource
              Identifier for Geographic Locations ('geo' URI)",
              RFC 5870, DOI 10.17487/RFC5870, June 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5870>.

   [RFC7986]  Daboo, C., "New Properties for iCalendar", RFC 7986,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7986, October 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7986>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

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   [RFC9073]  Douglass, M., "Event Publishing Extensions to iCalendar",
              RFC 9073, DOI 10.17487/RFC9073, August 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9073>.

9.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-calext-jscalendar-icalendar]
              Stepanek, R., "JSCalendar: Converting from and to
              iCalendar", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
              calext-jscalendar-icalendar, 16 October 2025,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-calext-
              jscalendar-icalendar/>.

   [I-D.stepanek-jscalendarbis]
              Jenkins, N.M. and R. Stepanek, "JSCalendar: A JSON
              Representation of Calendar Data", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-stepanek-jscalendarbis, 16 October
              2025, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-stepanek-
              jscalendarbis/>.

   [jmap-calendars]
              Jenkins, N.M. and M. Douglass, "JMAP for Calendars", Work
              in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-jmap-calendars, 8
              October 2025, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-
              ietf-jmap-calendars/>.

Author's Address

   Robert Stepanek
   Fastmail
   PO Box 234
   Collins St. West
   Melbourne VIC 8007
   Australia
   Email: rsto@fastmailteam.com

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