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Why are email and calendar so inextricably linked? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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Context: was looking for a decent service to give me a calendar a little while back but one thing that kept stopping me is there seems to be absolutely no service that just offers you a nice calendar, its only email services that happen to offer a calendar on the side.

I don't want another email. I have enough, and my current one is tied down to gmail (but I'd prefer if my calendar wasn't).

I'm sure there must a historical reason for this, but also why is does it still persevere?

One is a scheduling and time management thing, the other a communication system. I don't need to sign up for a messaging app to have a todo list.

The two aren't even well integrated smh.

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[–] 63 points 2 years ago (2 children)

There's no protocol for different calendar apps to send one another invites directly. They use email for that, which means they need an email integration. Email has the advantage of having been standardized back in the '80s and '90s, with only a few minor modifications since then (mostly for spam prevention). So different companies' email systems have to work together. Calendars just layer on top of that compatibility.

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Calendar apps can communicate with each other over the mail protocol? Or are you just saying they integrated them to make it easier for people to email each other invites

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  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    Your calendar app integrates with your email app. So when you create a calendar event and want to invite Bob to it, you can use your email contacts to find Bob. When you send the invite, it goes by email from your email system to Bob's. When Bob opens it, his email app asks him if he wants to add the event to his calendar.

    Your calendar app and Bob's calendar app never talk to each other directly, but you're still able to invite Bob to an event. Your calendar only talks to your email. Your email talks to your email service, which talks to Bob's email service. Bob's email client talks to Bob's email service and then to Bob's calendar.

    This is actually good. It means that anyone can switch to a different email or calendar app and all they have to do is update their contacts. People can use Hotmail or Gmail or Microsoft or self-hosted email, and integrate whatever calendar they like alongside it.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    That could work with any messaging service or app though. You just need some apis.

    and all they have to do is update their contacts. People can use Hotmail or Gmail or Microsoft or self-hosted email, and integrate whatever calendar they like alongside it.

    But well, that's kinda the problem that spurred this question though, you can't, because there are no independent calendar or email apps. If I use Gmail but want to dump Google calendar, too bad for me I guess.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    What’s the problem with just not using the portion of the service you do not wish to use? For almost everyone, the integration with email for the calendar is what actually makes it function, where you will be interacting with other people. Most people who want to create a new, unique calendar will just create an additional one in an existing account if they want a separate calendar for a certain purpose.

    That’s what I do with my wife for events that we both need to know about. So we have a calendar that is just our stuff and we both subscribe to it (or more like she has the calendar shared with her from my account) but she has permissions to add/remove things. Is there some reason you need a completely separate calendar on a unique service? I feel like we are missing something about your use case to actually be able to understand what you are trying to do.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    It is decentralized. Email is still a fantastic application for this. Reddit, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, messenger/WhatsApp and the likes are all trying to screw this up and force you into their walled of garden.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    This is a bit off. The apps do not integrate in any way. Your calendar app sends an email via your email provider.

    For example, you could use Simple Calendar Pro as your calendar app, and K9 Mail as your email app. If you send an invite, SCP does not need to use K9 to send the email invite. It sends the invite itself using the SMTP credentials.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Technically speaking, calendar apps don't really communicate with each other directly at all. It's the email systems that talk to the calendars.

    As fubo said, there's no protocol for a calendar function. Protocols are what apps used to talk to each other.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Except… CalDAV exists. It’s built on top of WebDAV and not email. IMAP has the ability to share objects, and some calendar apps use that to share calendars the same way you’d share emails, but there’s an international standard for doing calendars without email.

    I personally use a self-hosted NextCloud for calendars and contacts. It integrates into pretty much every app out there, or I can use the web interface or NextCloud apps. Email is only needed for the admin account to send email notifications of someone gets locked out etc.

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  • [–] -3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    you lost me at invites

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    It's fine if you don't have a need for invites. But question was why are they integrated, and that's why. For work I'm sure I send or receive a calendar invite every day. If my calendar wasn't integrated with my mail client it would add a lot of friction to that process.

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