On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 6:00 AM, <ietf-types-request@alvestrand.no> wrote:

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 08:42:13 -0400 From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@guppylake.com>

In other words:  iCal sucks but that's irrelevant.  Multiple syntaxes suck, but sometimes they're necessary.

If nothing else. failure to "standardize" an XML mapping will lead to many custom mappings - if for no other reason than that XML is all the rage. (At least until the next "XML" comes along. I remember when HDF was "it".)