XCal

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xCal is an XML representation of the iCalendar standard. xCal is not an alternative nor next generation of iCalendar. xCal represents iCalendar components, properties and parameters as defined in iCalendar.

XML Markup language developed by the W3C for encoding of data

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. The W3C's XML 1.0 Specification and several other related specifications—all of them free open standards—define XML.

iCalendar computer file format

The Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) is a MIME type which allows users to store and exchange calendaring and scheduling information such as events, to-dos, journal entries, and free/busy information. Files formatted according to the specification usually have an extension of .ics. With supporting software, such as an email reader or calendar application, recipients of an iCalendar data file can respond to the sender easily or counter-propose another meeting date/time. The file format is specified in a proposed internet standard for calendar data exchange.

This format was selected to ease its translation back to the iCalendar format using an XSLT transform.

XSLT is a language for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, or other formats such as HTML for web pages, plain text or XSL Formatting Objects, which may subsequently be converted to other formats, such as PDF, PostScript and PNG. XSLT 1.0 is widely supported in modern web browsers.

Compatible software

The XML format of xCal lends itself to XML tools like Apache Cocoon, and allows for a server to deliver xCal, which is then transformed by a browser or other client using XSLT.

Apache Cocoon, usually just called Cocoon, is a web application framework built around the concepts of pipeline, separation of concerns and component-based web development. The framework focuses on XML and XSLT publishing and is built using the Java programming language. The flexibility afforded by relying heavily on XML allows rapid content publishing in a variety of formats including HTML, PDF, and WML. The content management systems Apache Lenya and Daisy have been created on top of the framework. Cocoon is also commonly used as a data warehousing ETL tool or as middleware for transporting data between systems.


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