iCal - Beginner Tutorial and Docs?

Question

I am working with an existing ical file at work. I'm not sure who is creating it, and I would like to become more familiar with ical before I contact them - so I can have an intelligent conversation.

Can someone point me to a good beginner tutorial for iCal?

Most of what I've found so far has been very vague, and assumes too much user knowledge. I need something that covers the basics (tags/parameters, setup, publishing, etc), but also explains things like synching iPhone, Android, and Blackberry with calendar updates on the server.

Answer 1

The Wikipedia page on iCalendar includes an overview of the history and basics of the format.

RFC 5545 defines the detail of the format.

Here's a Java library that may help which has Android support

Answer 2

I've not come across what you are asking for - would love to know if it existed.

I have saved the links of the stuff I have found and also made a few notes about ical spec, timezones, nuanaces of all day events, date types (floating etc) etc along the way. These may be useful to you.

See http://icalevents.com/category/notes/ical-events/ and in the sidebar there are two sections of links:

Ical Spec RFC 5545 (some stuff you have already) and Testing Resources.

If you do find any great documentation, please post back here.

Answer 3

This is also a great resource:

http://www.kanzaki.com/docs/ical/