PRESS
RELEASE
News
Industry Advances XML Initiative
NICE,
France – The news industry’s technical standards body has approved two major
working papers for its latest XML initiative, NewsML, and authorized retention
of a consultant to produce a working draft by this summer.
At
its spring meeting here, the International Press Telecommunications Council
also ratified improvements to the News Industry Text Format, the XML-based text
markup standard, and expansions to its subject code list to provide for better
coverage of the Summer Olympic Games.
“These
actions are part of IPTC’s continuing effort to give XML a greater role in the
interchange of news information,” said Anthony Allday, director of Development
and Product Management, Media Group, at Reuterspace in London. Allday also is chairman of the organization’s
Press Relations Committee.
The
two NewsML papers are part of the IPTC 2000 initiative launched last fall to
develop an XML-based framework for structuring and managing news objects in a
multimedia environment. They are:
n
Requirements
Specification (http://www.iptc.org/xn-2.htm.)
n
Encoding
Decisions, a guideline on how XML is to be used to construct NewsML (http://www.iptc.org/xn-8.htm)
The consultant, Daniel Rivers-Moore of Rivcom, is
expected to begin work in April on writing the NewsML DTD and related
documentation. The goal is to have a
draft ready for review for the IPTC Annual General Meeting in early July in
Geneva.
Two NewsML working parties have scheduled meetings
in London next month to continue their work.
The News Structure and Management group will meet May 15-17, followed by
the News Text group May 17-19.
In other action at the spring meeting:
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The
NITF Maintenance Working Party won approval to streamline the text standard in
two ways: (1) structural changes, to
refine the organization of NITF documents, and improve definitions of container
elements so their use is consistent; and (2) tag clarification, to eliminate
redundant and unnecessary tags. The
NITF Maintenance group was formed in January to manage changes to the standard
and prepared these proposals at a meeting in February. Additional changes are pending and another
meeting is expected before the July AGM.
(The updated DTD is available at www.iptc.org
or www.nitf.org )
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The
Category Codes Working Party presented a proposal from Jean-Francois Richard of
Agence France-Presse in Paris to add qualifiers such as age, sex and division
to the IPTC Subject Code scheme. This
is particularly important for identifying specific Olympic events, but has
application in other sports reporting as well.
The full Standards Committee approved the changes. Version 4 of the scheme in XML is available
at www.nitf.org/SubjectView.zip
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The
IPTC agreed to pursue contacts with groups developing other media standards as
it develops NewsML and maintains the NITF.
These include MPEG-7, a metadata standard for audio and video objects;
PRISM, an XML initiative for magazine publishing; and SMPTE/EBU, an advanced
authoring format for the broadcasting industry.
For
more information, contact David Allen, managing director of the IPTC, at ho73@dial.pipex.com .
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