iptc nitf november 2010

NITF 4.0http://www.nitf.org

Stuart MylesAssociated Press

Rome / 3rd November 2010

http://www.nitf.org/

NITF

© 2010 IPTC (www.iptc.org) All rights reserved 2

• News Industry Text Format• “A solution for sharing news”• Developed by News Publishers, for News

Publishers• Defines the content and structure of news articles• Currently, NITF v3.5 in DTD and XSD

http://www.nitf.org

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf/

http://www.nitf.org/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf/

Towards NITF 4.0


• Open up the schema– To give NITF users greater flexibility and control– Align NITF with other standards

• The original NITF 4.0 road map:– XSD documentation <- Progress to report– Namespaces <- Progress to report– RDFization <- Now part of a broader IPTC initiative– G2ization <- No progress

• NITF 4.0 started Spring 2010, target end of 2010

XSD Documentation• Currently, only the NITF 3.5 DTD has documentation• An “experimental” NITF XSD with documentation

mechanically copied over:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf/files/schema/nitf-3-5.xsd

• Comments requested, none received…

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf/message/772


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf/files/schema/nitf-3-5.xsd

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf/message/772

NITF + Foreign Namespace e.g. Adding Geo Information


• Maps are popular ways to display news• It would be handy to be able to use GEORSS to add

latitude and longitude information into an NITF article

• Unfortunately, NITF doesn’t allow “foreign namespaces”

Foreign Namespaces

• A long-standing criticism of NITF is that it is closed to foreign namespacese.g. http://snee.com/xml/xml2005/industryschemas.html#d50e406

• NITF 3.5 added more complete support for foreign namespaces in enriched text – but not yet elsewhere

• We decided to turn NITF 4.0 into a more open schema• An experimental XSD can be found at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf/files/schema/

http://www.iptc.org/std-dev/NITF/4.0/


http://snee.com/xml/xml2005/industryschemas.html#d50e406

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf/files/schema/


Experimenting with Namespaces

I constructed some NITF instance documents

to help figure out where to add namespaces

into NITF 4.0


Testing is Important!

• The NITF 3.5 XSD foreign namespace support didn’t work as expected

• I wanted to be able to add some XHTML but couldn’t at first

• I had to change the processContents style to “lax”


NITF <head>

• Within the <head> it makes sense to add expansion slots within <docdata> and at the end of <head>

• Everywhere else is already generic (iim, pubdata) or too specific


NITF <body>

• Added namespaces to <body.head>…


NITF <body>

• … and within <media> …


NITF <body>

• … and within <block>.

• I experimented with namespaces outside of “containers” in the <body> but triggered XSD errors.

• Also, what would this “mean”?


After NITF <body>?

• I allowed foreign namespaces after the body

• This would turn NITF into a “envelope” language

• Other languages (ATOM, NewsML-G2) sport this model– Could be useful as a general-purpose expansion– Perhaps as a way to carry additional metadata such as codes


NITF Attributes• I added foreign namespace

attributes to the commonNITFAttributes group

• Used in many – but far from all -NITF elements


• Adding foreign namespace attributes to the globalNITFAttributes group would cover the rest of the NITF elements

NITF and IPTC’s G2

• G2 is a unified framework for packaging and exchanging news content

• Standard model for news metadata regardless of the content or media type

• However, NITF predates the G2 framework

• With work, NITF can join the G2 family, just like SportsML• The biggest change will be the inline adoption of QCodes

– Colon separated scheme:code syntax for controlled vocabularies

• Proposal: proceed with NITF 4.0 without G2 support, to avoid delay – G2 support is too big to rush


NITF 4.0

• The experimental NITF 4.0 schema and a couple of example documents were distributed to the NITF Yahoo! email list for comment and are available athttp://www.iptc.org/std-dev/NITF/4.0/

• After the deadline for submitting documents to this meeting, I got a little feedback, asking for additions– What is the formal procedure? Can we vote and make changes?

• NITF v 3.4 started the move to XML Schema in 2007• Adding documentation and opening up to “foreign

namespaces” completes the transition to XML Schema





NITF

Any other business?

Date and place of next meeting:

Spring 2011

Grazie!


iptc nitf november 2010

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