Welcome to NewsML™ 1
...
... the versatile News
Markup Language for global news exchange.
NewsML 1 is designed to provide
a media-independent, structural framework for multi-media
news.
Currently the IPTC works
on the next version of this standard named
"NewsML-G2" which will be a member of a family of
IPTC news exchange format standards - collectively
known as "G2-Standards". An Experimental
Phase 1 package of NewsML-G2 is available
for testing until
31 August 2007.
After that date the NewsML-G2 team at the IPTC continues
to work on the specifications and is aiming at a release
in early 2008.
NewsML 1.x versions can be applied
at all stages in the (electronic) news lifecycle.
Typical use would include:
- in and between editorial systems
- between news agencies and their
customers
- between publishers and news aggregators
- and between news service providers
and end users.
Because it is intended for use in
electronic production, delivery and archiving it does
not include specific provision for traditional paper-based
publishing, though formats intended for this purpose
- such as the News Industry Text Format (NITF)- can
be accommodated. Similarly it is not primarily intended
for use in editing
or creating news content, though it may be used as
a basis for systems doing this.
The need for NewsML came from the
continuing growth in production, use and re-use of
news throughout the world, with rapid expansion of
the Internet being a strong driving force.
NewsML concept in brief
At the heart of NewsML is the concept
of the news item which can contain various different
media – text, photos, graphics, video - together
with all the meta-information that enables the recipient
to understand the relationship between components and
understand the roles of each component.
Everything the recipient might need
to know about the content of the news provided can
be included in NewsML’s structure. For example,
NewsML enables publishers to provide the same text
in different languages; a video clip in different formats;
or different resolutions of the same photograph. NewsML’s
rich metadata concept can help with things like revision
levels that make it easy to track the evolution of
a NewsItem over time, status details (publishable,
embargoed, etc.) and administrative details, such as
acknowledgements or copyright details.
NewsML has default metadata vocabularies to ease implementations but it does
not dictate which metadata vocabulary is used (IPTC Subject Codes, ISO country
codes etc.) – a providers just haves to indicate which vocabulary they
are using. Multiple vocabularies can be utilised within the same NewsItem.
For text objects in a NewsItem, the IPTC’s News Industry Text Format
(NITF) is recommended.
NewsML is flexible and extensible
and uses standard Internet naming conventions for identifying
the news objects in a NewsItem. As such, content does
not have to actually be embedded within a NewsItem;
pointers can be inserted to content held on a publisher’s
web site instead. This means subscribers retrieve the
data only when they need to and this makes NewsML bandwidth-efficient.
(NewsML™ is a registered
Trademark of the IPTC - read the
Terms and Conditions of its use) |
