Arthur's Mutterings

I have been looking at the idea of shared calendars, and seeing that many programs (like evolution) support iCal format, i figured it would be pretty easy to find a solution.

So i thought i should be able to keep my calendars on a central server, edit them on the server via some scripts, and also via a local copy of evolution, firefox-calendar, outlook, whatever.

Now just storing the data on a central server and retrieving it seems fairly easy, its just webdav, so thats a quick apache config hack.

There are seemingly boundless quantities of web based calendar applications, sure, many with some kind of import-export ical utility.

But when you look really hard, it seems that you cant combine all of those things. The root cause seems to be that the ical format perhaps just isnt really upto it, that you have to transfer whole calendars around, so that if theres a chance of two people editing the same one then a hideous merging problem is created, so none of the tools seem to allow you to both download AND upload the same calendar automatically.

I think i shall just have to admit defeat on the subject, and go for one of the compromises, of view and edit calendar via the web interface, and have a download only view of it via ical to evolution. shame.