Calendars as a general case? Not so fast

Dan Farber: "As is generally the case with software, calendars are tethered to specific platforms, which makes it difficult to ensure interoperability."

Not so fast. Look at these data types in software which are already generally interoperable:

• Email
• Rich text files
• Comma-delimited data
• Tab-delimited data
• MP3 audio files
• RSS feeds & aggregators
• CAD formats
• PDF files
• HTML
• AVI video files

While more can be done in all the above areas, and in compound document interoperability, I object to sweeping generalizations that perpetuate the very acute interoperability problems that have vexed computer-based calendars ever since IBM's mainframe-based PROFS ceased to be the de facto standard.