The IPTC's News Industry Text Format is an XML format for news article content and metadata. This presentation discusses the progress on the roadmap to NITF 4.0 - incorporating the Semantic Web, more complete namespace support and aligning NITF with IPTC's NewsML-G2.

1. NITF Maintenancewww.NITF.org Stuart Myles Associated Press Paris, France / March 8th, 2010

3. Other text markup

5. © IPTC – www.iptc.org 4 NITF Matters Matters arising?

6. © IPTC – www.iptc.org 5 Chairman’s Report NITF = “News Industry Text Format” Defines the content and structure of articles IPTC’s most widely-used XML standard 421 members on the Y! list down from 435 in October 4 emails since October NITF 3.5 released in December 2009 http://www.nitf.org http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf/

7. NITF 4.0 Road Map In October 2010 we proposed a road map: Kick off NITF 4.0 in Spring 2010 Discuss G2ization RDFization Namespaces Target NITF 4.0 for end of 2010 © IPTC – www.iptc.org 6

8. NITF 4.0 NITF 4.0: Unlocking the power of NITF © IPTC – www.iptc.org 7

9. NITF 4.0 – Semantic Web Dear IPTC Standards Committee, Please set up a Working Group to consider RDF, Semantic Web and Linked Data. How might they relate to IPTC standards? Regards, NITF Working Group October 2009 © IPTC – www.iptc.org 8

10. NITF and the Semantic Web For a Dow Jones project, I created a representation of key article information I used semantic web vocabularies – chiefly FOAF and Dublin Core Terms But there was no match for “byline” I considered using G2’s <by> element But NITF’s <byline> was actually what I needed © IPTC – www.iptc.org 9

11. Semantic Web:News Vocabulary IPTC could create a news-specific vocabulary of terms. I saw a need, as have New York Times and others © IPTC – www.iptc.org 10

12. Semantic Web Vocabularies Best known RDF vocabularies are FOAF = Friend of a Friend http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/ DCMI Terms = Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Terms http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ Other examples at http://vocab.org/ © IPTC – www.iptc.org 11

13. Semantic Web Vocabulary An example from Dublin Core Terms: © IPTC – www.iptc.org 12

14. Semantic Web Vocabularies An example from Dublin Core Terms: There are some news-specific terms that aren’t defined in other vocabularies, such as “byline”. We could define a news vocabulary (a relatively simple data model) or a full ontology (richer but more work). © IPTC – www.iptc.org 13

15. NITF 4.0 and Semantic Web Should IPTC take a lead role? Other organizations are starting to create news vocabularies Are there meaningful differences between NITF and the G2 family? Maybe a way to bring the two closer together Note that NITF has always been “semantic” http://www.iptc.org/std/NITF/documentation/stx9804-NITFmarkupGuidelines.pdf © IPTC – www.iptc.org 14

16. Geographic Information Gerd Kamp from DPA Infocom discusses using NITF to represent locations: http://r.ka2.de/?p=595 He found everything he needed Except for a way to represent a centroid Centroid is the central point of a place Expressed a latitude and longitude © IPTC – www.iptc.org 15

17. A georss:point in NITF Adding a centroid using georss © IPTC – www.iptc.org 16

18. Adding Latitude and Longitude We could add latitude and longitude to NITF’s location-related elements Maps as user interfaces to news are growing in popularity But geographic information can be quite complex Centroid, Bounding Box, Bounding Polygon… So can we consider a different approach? © IPTC – www.iptc.org 17

19. The GeoRSS Namespace GeoRSS is widely used in RSS and ATOM Designed to be embedded in XML http://www.georss.org So why recreate those structures in NITF? © IPTC – www.iptc.org 18

20. Foreign Namespace In NITF 3.5, we completed the support for “foreign namespaces” introduced into the schema in v3.4 Specifically, the “enriched text” has a choice of <any namespace="##other"/> This allows other namespaces to be used within such NITF elements as caption, tagline, etc. © IPTC – www.iptc.org 19

21. Foreign Namespaces Elsewhere? So far, we have only allowed non NITF namespaces within enriched text This means that NITF is a “closed” schema All innovation in the use of NITF needs to be centralized within the IPTC Do we want to allow other namespaces to be mixed in with NITF documents? Allow proprietary extensions to be “legal” © IPTC – www.iptc.org 20

22. NITF 4.0 and G2 IPTC’s G2 standard is a unified framework Packaging and exchanging news content Standard model for news metadata regardless of the content or media type However, NITF predates and stands outside the G2 framework Can NITF join the G2 family of standards? © IPTC – www.iptc.org 21

23. NITF and G2 We studied how SportsML became part of the G2 family It seems a similar path is possible for NITF The biggest change will be the inline adoption of QCodes in NITF Colon separated scheme:code syntax for controlled vocabularies © IPTC – www.iptc.org 22

24. NITF and G2 With work, NITF can be brought within the G2 framework NITF would bring inline semantics (entities) into G2 Should NITF Classic live on? © IPTC – www.iptc.org 23

25. NITF 4.0 Unlocking the power of NITF Joining the Semantic Web Opening up to other namespaces Joining the G2 family of standards © IPTC – www.iptc.org 24

26. Other Text Markup NITF isn’t the only text markup effort Or even the most active HTML5 hNews IPTC 7901 © IPTC – www.iptc.org 25

27. HTML5 New Elements HTML5 is introducing several new structural elements, including <section> <article> <aside> <header> <footer> HTML5 is moving confidently beyond presentation into news-like structure http://dev.w3.org/html5/html4-differences/#new-elements © IPTC – www.iptc.org 26

28. hNews A microformat for adding some news-specific semantics into display-ready HTML Adopted by Associated Press for recent Winter Games and forthcoming World Cup websites We know of around 200 other websites using hNews Starting to see some tools being built © IPTC – www.iptc.org 27

29. IPTC 7901 An idea to add markup to pre-XML text markup Can we use Markdown? The idea will be discussed later during the Standards Meeting © IPTC – www.iptc.org 28

30. NITF Documentation Upgrading the NITF website. Some ideas: Simplify getting to the NITF specs Perhaps adopt Subversion for previous versions? Supply NITF <-> XHTML XSLT transforms Copy NITF DTD documentation into the XSD Modernize the documentation Discuss NITF and G2? Volunteers to take on any of the work? © IPTC – www.iptc.org 29

31. NITF Any other business? © IPTC – www.iptc.org 30

32. © IPTC – www.iptc.org 31 NITF Date and place of next meeting: San Francisco, USA - Summer 2010 Merci!