IPTC SpectrumNo 21 - 2006 IPTC - INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FOR NEWS
“The basic goal of the News Architecture is to provide a single generic model for exchanging all kinds of newsworthy information” IPTC Objectives
“To establish and maintain an open, apolitical international forum to promote and enable the exchange of news information in an efficient manner, while maintaining the highest technical quality. At the same time taking advantage of the advances in telecommunication and computing technology.” Recognising the increasing use of computer based systems by news agencies, newspapers, and other news organisations, IPTC has concentrated on the development and application of standards for the high speed transfer of digital news information. Recently - in response to the influence of the World Wide Web - efforts have been directed towards systems for multimedia news and on line publishing. This includes the production of classification systems that make it possible to consistently identify news content, irrespective of the source of language of the service.
IPTC Standards Current standards NewsML 1: A media-independent standard for the packaging and management of multi-media news throughout its lifecycle. XML-based. www.newsml.org NITF: Format for marking up textual news stories. XML based. www.nitf.org SportsML: Standard for the interchange of sports data, including scores, schedules, standings, and statistics. XML-based. www.sportsml.org IPTC Core: Metdata set primarily for photographs and used with Adobe's Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP). www.iptc4xmp.org NewsCodes: Controlled vocabularies of terms widely used in the news industry. They include: an extensive Subject taxonomy; genres and scenes; and ratings for priority, urgency and relevance. www.newscodes.org
Standards under Development The IPTC G2 Family of Standards will be based on the IPTC News Architecture which provides a framework and a set of common specifications and components. Use of a common style will make the G2 Standards easier to understand and implement. NewsML-G2: Intended as a wrapper for general news in the form of text, photos, graphics, video or other media. It can be used for packaging any combination of these items. EventsML-G2: An information interchange standard for newsworthy event information, including event publishing, planning and coverage. www.iptc.org/EventsML SportsML-G2: Version of SportsML designed to integrate into the G2 Standards family. ProgramGuideML: A specialised format for listings of television and radio program guides. www.programguideml.org
Legacy Standards IIM: Container for news information in any of the common news media (including text, photographs, graphics, audio and video). Last revised in 1999. The DNPR is a container file format designed to carry digital news photograph data within the IIM. www.iptc.org/IIM IPTC7901: Text message format, last revised in1995. www.iptc.org/IPTC7901 Both the IIM and IPTC7901 are still in widespread use by the news industry around the world.
IPTC standards and supporting documents are all available for download and free use in accordance with the IPTC Intellectual Property Policy. www.iptc.org/goto/ipp
2 IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 International Press Telecommunications Contents Council
Chairman: Stéphane Guérillot Honorary Treasurer: Organisation Henrik Stadler IPTC Objectives 2 Vice Chairmen: IPTC Standards 2 Walter Baranger; Rudi Horvath; Members and Membership 4 John Iobst; John Minting Peter Müller; Hitoshi Saito. A Major Investment 6 Managing Director: Management Committee 7 Michael Steidl IPTC Discussion Groups 7 Editor: 2006 AGM 8 Hugh Johnstone Intellectual Property Policy 9
Published by the PR Committee 10 International Press Telecommunications Council Royal Albert House Standards Sheet Street Sustained Commitment 11 Windsor Working Parties and Groups 12 Berkshire SL4 1BE England Tel: +44(0)1753 705051 Photo Metadata 14 Fax: +44(0)1753 831541
E-mail: [email protected] News Industry Text Format 15 [email protected]
Web Portal: www.iptc.org NewsML 1 16 News Architecture Development of the Common Components - second generation - G2 Family of IPTC Common Structure - Standards has been Common Processing 17 a major undertaking, Controlled Vocabularies with a continued and Qcodes 18 effort throughout 2006 Person Concept 19 giving a Release Candidate version of Any Item 20 the underlying News Linking Features 21 Architecture. News Message 22 Power Extensions 22 Illustrations of the NAR Items provided by IPTC member Athens Technology Centre. News Content Information Exchange 23 NewsML-G2 Media Characteristics 23 Olympic Reports 24
NewsCodes A Good Description 24 IPTC NewsCodes 25 NewsCodes and the NAR 26
IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 3 ORGANISATION IPTC Members
Nominating Members
Agence France Presse (afp) - France - www.afp.com ANSA - Italy - www.ansa.it Austria Presse Agentur (APA) - Austria - www.apa.at BBC Monitoring - UK - www.monitor.bbc.co.uk BBC Scotland - UK - www.bbc.co.uk/scotland Business Wire - USA - www.businesswire.com CNW Group Ltd. - Canada - www.newswire.ca Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) - Germany - www.dpa.de Dow Jones & Company - USA - www.dowjones.com Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association (NSK) - Japan - www.pressnet.or.jp Keystone - Switzerland - www.keystone.ch KUNA Kuwait News Agency - Kuwait - www.kuna.net.kw Kyodo News - Japan - www.kyodo.co.jp Market Wire, a CCNMatthews Company - Canada - www.marketwire.com NewsCom - USA - www.newscom.com Newspaper Association of America (NAA) - USA - www.naa.org ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Company) - Austria - www.orf.at PA News Ltd - UK - www.pa.press.net PLUS Coalition - USA - www.useplus.org PR Newswire - UK - www.prnewswire.co.uk Reuters Limited - UK - www.reuters.com SDA/ATS - Switzerland - www.sda-ats.ch The Associated Press (AP) - USA - www.ap.org The New York Times Company - USA - www.nytimes.com Tidningarnas Telegrambyra (TT) - Sweden - www.tt.se TMNEWS-APCOM - Italy - www.apcom.it United Press International (UPI) - USA - www.upi.com World Association of Newspapers (WAN) - International - www.wan-press.org Xinhua News Agency - China - www.xinhua.org
IPTC is an organization based on its members. The membership consists of news agencies, news agency alliances, newspaper publishers' organisations, individual newspapers and system vendors from around the world. Reasons for being an IPTC member include: IPTC is the only organisation that addresses the news industry concerns for standardisation of information transfer formats. IPTC is an organisation concerned with news agencies and their customers' information transfer problems. IPTC fosters exposure to business ideas used around the world to distribute news. IPTC encourages personal relationships among peers from around the world. IPTC provides a world news lobby voice for standardisation of telecommunications services. IPTC allows members to request research and development in areas of specific interest to their business activities.
4 IPTC Spectrum - N0 21 - 2006 ORGANISATION
Associate Members
AFX News Ltd - UK - www.afxnews.com Agence de Presse Belga - Belgium - www.belga.be Agencia EFE - Spain - www.efe.es Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANP) - The Netherlands - www.anp.nl ANA, Athens News Agency - Greece - www.ana.gr AS Norsk Telegrambyrå - Norway - www.ntb.no Atex Media Command - Australia - www.atex.com Athens Techology Center - Greece - www.atc.gr Beijing Founder Electronics - China - www.founder.com.cn BVPA - Germany - www.bvpa.org Canadian Press - Canada - www.cp.org CCI Europe - Denmark - www.ccieurope.com Cepic - Coordination of European Picture Agencies Press Stock Heritage - Europe - www.cepic.org EAST Co., Ltd - Japan - www.est.co.jp/english EBU - European Broadcasting Union - Europe - www.ebu.ch Eidos Media Spa - Italy - www.eidosmedia.com Fingerpost Ltd - UK - www.fingerpost.co.uk HINA - Croatia - www.hina.hr IFRA - Germany - www.ifra.com ITAR-TASS - Russia - www.itar-tass.com Korea Press Foundation - Korea - www.kpf.or.kr La Reppublica - Italy - www.repubblica.it Magyar Távirati Iroda Rt (MTI) - Hungary - www.mti.hu Mainstream Data Inc. - USA - www.mainstreamdata.com Mecom - Germany - www.mecom.de Mediaspan - USA - www.mediaspan.com MENA - Egypt - www.mena.org.eg News Engin, Inc. - USA - www.newsengin.com Profium Oy - Finland - www.profium.com RelaxNews - France - www.relaxnews.com Ritzau Bureau I's - Denmark - www.ritzau.dk RivCom - UK - www.rivcom.com Suomen Tietotoimisto Oy - Finland - www.stt.fi Tera Digital Publishing - Italy - www.teradp.com XML Team Solutions, Inc. - USA - www.xmlteam.com
There are two types of IPTC membership: Nominating membership is open to organizations and companies concerned with news collection, distribution and publishing. Nominating members may send up to 3 persons per Contributory Unit (which is equal to a share) to a meeting, one or more Units can be subscribed. One nominating member representative (per Unit) may vote at General Meetings and Committees and all delegates can vote at Working Parties of the IPTC. Associate membership is open to organizations and companies as for the Nominating membership and for system vendors supporting the news industry. Associate members may send one person to the meetings, but they receive all papers and other material. Associate member representatives are only eligible to vote at Working Parties, not at General Meetings and Committees.
Further information on IPTC membership is available from www.iptc.org.
IPTC Spectrum - N0 21 - 2006 5 ORGANISATION A Major Investment
Development of the new IPTC The new general news exchange News Architecture (NAR) has standard will be NewsML-G2, with proved to be a major undertak- this name benefiting from the suc- ing and the process of refining cess of NewsML 1 and maintaining the NAR model and specifica- the registered NewsML trademark. tion to meet a demanding set of A corporate identity for the G2- requirements was particularly standards will be developed to em- complex and time consuming. It phasise the close relationship be- has also made heavy demands tween the standards. on the resources available to the Detailed work on the specifica- organisation. tion and model for the NAR is being However the investment that carried out by a relatively small has been made is now giving the group of delegates, who have the desired results. A revised schedule necessary understanding of the for the development process has technical requirements and how been produced, and it is antici- the news industry works. Their ef- pated that the first of the new- forts are being complemented by Overview generation standards based on the the use of consultants to create NAR will be released towards the and update a set of XML Schemas A sustained effort has resulted end of 2007. to provide an implementation, and in release of a draft News to undertake a full quality assur- Architecture v1.0 and it is Standards framework ance programme on the documen- planned that the first G2- The News Architecture is designed tation. standards using this as a framework that will provide a architecture will become common base for a new genera- Testing available during 2007. tion of IPTC standards. Since the As part of the development pro- Development of established new standards will have a consis- cess the NAR has been subject to standards continues with new tent style, and make use of com- extensive testing with an initial Ex- versions of the NITF, SportsML mon components, rules and perimental Phase starting in De- and the IPTC NewsCodes, while processes they will be easier to un- cember 2005. Results from this these standards are finding derstand, and implement. first test phase fed back into the further applications. Work has In addition, having an estab- continuing development process to started in the area of photo lished structure means that it will give an updated model and specifi- metadata. be simpler and quicker to develop cation for a second Experimental A formal Intellectual new standards, since the only new Phase that started in May 2006. Protection Policy has been elements required will be ones that Feedback from this second implemented. Efforts continue are specific to the subject of the phase, and from extensive discus- to improve public awareness of new standard. sions before, during, and after, the IPTC’s standards and activities, AGM and the Autumn Meeting, re- and 2006 saw a significant Consistent style sulted in significant changes, with increase in membership. To reinforce the fact that the new the resulting NAR Release Candi- Formal meetings were well standards belong to an integrated date released for public comment attended with the working family they will be named in a con- in mid January 2007. sessions complemented by a sistent manner. Collectively the The time-consuming nature of varied and informative series of new news standards will be the such tests - as a test package has presentations. “IPTC G2-standards” while individ- to be put together and distributed, A naming policy has been ual standards will be known, for ex- the actual tests carried out, and the established for the new ample, as EventsML-G2 and results analysed before they can standards family. SportsML-G2. be acted on - has been a significant
6 IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 0RGANISATION
factor in the extended timescale experienced in this development. However, such tests are seen as essential to ensure that the News Architecture will provide a compre- hensive and robust basis for the planned G2-standards family.
Other standards Although the new News Architec- ture has absorbed a considerable amount of effort, the continuing contributions of members have al- lowed significant progress in other areas. There were new releases of both the NITF and SportsML - with DTD and XML Schema versions in each case - while a XML Schema for NewsML 1 is well under way. Management Committee for 2006 to These are established standards SportsML 2007. From left to right: John with substantial user bases com- Similarly, interest in SportsML con- Minting (UPI), Honorary Treasurer tinues at a high level, and the stan- Henrik Stadler (TT), Walter plemented by a body of suppliers Baranger (New York Times), IPTC offering compliant systems. This dard was successfully used to Managing Director Michael Steidl, makes them particularly attractive provide coverage for the 2006 IPTC Chairman Stéphane Guérillot to users wishing to update older Torino Winter Olympics. (AFP), Peter Müller (SDA/ATS), systems. Comments from a Major League John Iobst (NAA), Hitoshi Saito Baseball Club helped provide a re- (NSK) and Rudi Horvath (APA). The NewsML adoption vised and more detailed plug-in for Management Committees serves For example, in June 2006 the ma- this sport. A new plug-in has been as the Board of Directors for IPTC, jor Italian news agencies (Ansa, developed for curling. generates guidelines for the future Suggestions for additional plug- development of the organisation, AGI, Apcom, and ADN Kronos) an- and is elected annually at the nounced their intention to start de- ins to cover new sports are often Annual General Meeting. livering their news using the received, but for these to be con- NewsML 1 format. sidered there also needs to be an In another development the Ko- offer to help undertake the neces- to find out exactly what they are be- rea Press Foundation have been sary work. SportsML appears to ing used for. investigating the possibility of have wide appeal outside the news NewsML adoption within its na- industry - for example in fantasy NewCodes tional news industry, and a sports applications - and this ap- Further extensions to the IPTC NewsML Seminar was held in Soul pears to be the source of some of NewsCodes have been agreed, in November 2006. As part of the the suggestions. and work is underway on a new seminar there were guest presen- With all the standards the fact generation of the IPTC Subject tations from Michael Steidl (IPTC that they are freely available from NewsCodes. To help with this managing Director) and Takahiro the IPTC Web site means that it IPTC have entered into a three- Fujiwara (Vice-Chair of the can be difficult to establish just how year agreement to use the Sche- NewsML 1 Maintenance Working widely they are being adopted, and maLogic taxonomy management Party). system. With this system the NewsCodes and related data will be held in a cen- tral repository allowing IPTC public discussion groups: delegates around the world to make and ac- News Architecture G2 - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newsml-g2 cess proposals, and in- NewsML 1 and NewsML-G2 - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newsml terchange comments, during the development News Industry Text Format - NITF - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nitf process. SportsML and SportsML-G2 - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sportsml EventsML-G2 - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eventsml Photo Metadata Another area of new ProgramGuideML - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/programguideml work is that of Photo Me- Photo Metadata - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iptc-photometadata tadata with a Working IPTC Core: metadata for XMP - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iptc4xmp Group having been es- tablished to deal with re- NewsCodes - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newscodes lated issues within the IPTC. This group takes in
IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 7 ORGANISATION
activities associated with the IPTC Core (for XMP) and one of its first actions was to investigate the availability of photo software sup- porting this, and the older “IPTC Headers”, making the information available on the IPTC Web site. Results of this survey work has also helped to emphasise just how widespread the use of the “IPTC Headers” and the “IPTC Core” really is.
Photo Metadata Conference As part of the process of improving awareness of IPTC’s activities, There was a record and establishing user needs, the attendance at the IPTC Photo Metadata Working Group in- XXXXI Annual General tends to hold a Photo Metadata Meeting, which was held in Conference “Working towards a Vienna at the invitation of seamless photo workflow” on the 7 the Austrian Press Agency, June 2007. who were very generous In keeping with IPTC’s practice hosts. Welcoming of co-operation with other stan- delegates to the Meeting Wolfgang Vyslozil (Austria dards and industry bodies this Press Agency CEO) - left - Conference is being organised and Rudi Horvarth (APA-IT with Ifra and held in conjunction Managing Director) - right - with the CEPIC (Coordination of explained that for them hosting the AGM was a way of saying thank you to European Picture Agencies Press the IPTC and its members, as APA had derived a lot of benefits from its Stock Heritage) Congress 2007 in long relationship with IPTC . Florence. news industry - and other inter- and software. Development process ested parties - are kept aware of Meetings, conference calls and Standards development is under- plans and progress. on-line discussions are carried out taken by a series of Working Par- Information on activities and on under the terms of the Policy. All ties and Working Groups which the standards is posted on the IPTC members have explicitly ac- carry out their work using the com- IPTC Web site and a series of pub- cepted the terms of the IP Policy, bination of a development discus- lic discussion groups are main- and acceptance is one of the con- sion group (with membership tained - see box on page 7. These ditions of membership. restricted to IPTC delegates) and groups also provide a forum for telephone conferences, along with non-members to raise points of in- Membership meetings where possible. terest, and seek advice on specific Increasing appreciation of the work As noted above, these efforts aspects of standards use. IPTC is undertaking, and of the tend to be restricted to relatively value of its established standards - small groups. In part this is be- Intellectual Property Policy along with sustained publicity ef- cause there is often a need for spe- The experience and industry forts - have resulted in a significant cialist knowledge, while delegates knowledge provided by the mem- increase in the membership. have to find time to make their con- bers, coupled with the hard work of As well as providing an additional tributions - while still carrying out delegates in development, means presence in the Near East and their duties in the organisations that the IPTC standards represent Asia, the new members have pro- that employ them. A lot of commit- a considerable amount of intellec- vided further representation from ment is needed to take the work on tual capital. the broadcast and photo areas. - particularly for delegates that take The standards, along with soft- Delegates from the new members lead responsibility in the Commit- ware, reports and other material, have also provided a welcome ad- tees, Working Parties and Groups. are made freely available for use dition to the Working Parties and Considerable thanks are due to by the news industry, and other Working Groups. the individuals concerned, and to parties, and an Intellectual Prop- the organisations that let them erty Policy (IP Policy) has been in- Meetings have the time to take part. troduced to set out the conditions IPTC is an international organisa- under which the standards can be tion with world-wide membership Public awareness used. Details of these conditions and in recognition of this the regu- Although participation in standards are given in the panel opposite. lar working meetings - normally work is restricted to delegates from The policy also includes two main three a year - are held in different member organisations, care is licence agreements covering the locations around the world to en- taken to ensure that the general use of specification documents courage as much participation as
8 IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 ORGANISATION
possible. The 2006 meetings were held in Vancouver (Canada), Vi- enna (Austria) for the Annual Gen- eral Meeting, and Madrid (Spain). IPTC Intellectual Locations and dates for the 2007 meetings are Cairo, Egypt (12 - 14 March), Tokyo, Japan (28 - 31 Property Policy May) and Prague, Czech Republic (15 - 17 October). The IPTC generally makes all of its Intellectual Property available Feedback to any interested parties. Such IP is made available under the These formal meetings are where following conditions: the output of the Working Parties and Working Groups are pre- a IPTC provides explicit licenses to use its Specifications and sented and discussed, providing Materials. The licenses appear as “Non-Exclusive License valuable feedback for the develop- Agreement for International Press Telecommunications Council ment process. Once development Specifications and Related Documentation” and “International is complete the standards are Press Telecommunications Council Software License Agreement”. given a final review, with formal ap- proval for release coming from the Standards Committee. b IPTC Specifications and Materials may be downloaded or Informal discussions between copied provided that ALL copies retain the ownership, copyright delegates are another important and license notices. feature of the meetings, allowing the interchange of techniques and c Specifications and Materials may not be edited, modified, or ideas to the benefit of all con- presented in a context that creates a misleading or false cerned. impression or statement as to the positions, actions, or statements of the IPTC. Meeting presentations Presentations, both from members d The name and trademarks of the IPTC may not be used in and from outside parties, are an advertising, publicity, or products and their names without the important aspect of the Meetings, specific, written prior permission of the IPTC. Any permitted use of with the 2006 programme covering the trademarks of the IPTC, whether registered or not, must be a wide range of interests. Presen- accompanied by an appropriate mark and attribution, as agreed tations included: with the IPTC. • Syndication on the Web - Tim Bray, Director of Web Technolo- e IPTC Specifications may be extended by both members and gies at Sun Microsystems, and a non-members to provide additional functionality (Extended major contributor to XML and Specifications) provided that the Extended Specifications and the Atom web standards. related documentation make clear recognition of the existence and • PLUS Picture Licensing - Jeff ownership of the IPTC IP and provided that the extensions are Sedlik, President and CEO of the clearly identified and provided that a perpetual license is granted Picture Licensing Universal Sys- by the creator of the Extended Specifications for other members tem (PLUS). and non-members to use the Extended Specifications and to • Metadata in Broadcasting - Jean- continue extensions of the Extended Specifications. The IPTC Pierre Evain from the EBU Tech- does not waive any of its rights in the Standards and Materials in nical department. this context. The Extended Specifications may be considered the • Ars Electronica (creative use of intellectual property of their creator. The IPTC expressly disclaims the computer) - Wolfgang Bed- any responsibility for damage caused by an extension to IPTC nardzek. Specifications. • The newspaper has a future (plans for the launch of a new f IPTC Specifications and Materials may be included in derivative newspaper for the Austrian mar- work of both members and non-members provided that there is a ket) - Wolfgang Zekert. clear recognition in the derivative work and its related • Advantages of taking NewsML documentation of the IPTC IP and its ownership. The IPTC does into the Semantic Web - Raphaël not waive any of its rights in the Specifications and Materials in Troncy, co-chair of the W3C Mul- this context. Derivative work in its entirety may be considered the timedia Semantics Incubator intellectual property of the creator of the work. The IPTC expressly Group. disclaims any responsibility for damage caused when its IP is used • MESH - Multimedia Semantic in a derivative context. Syndication for Enhanced News Services. An overview of the proj- The full IPTC Intellectual Property Policy statement and licences ect was provided by Nikos Saris are available from www.iptc.org/goto/ipp. from the Athens Technology Centre at the AGM with futher as-
IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 9 ORGANISATION
pects outlined in Madrid by Paullo maLogic. Villegas from Telefónica. Both of This presentation was these organisations are partici- arranged to provide pating in the Mesh project. members of the News- • Use of SportsML for a team data- Codes Party with infor- base for ORF (the Austrian TV mation about the and Radio service) - Gerald Schi- system, and it was sub- nagl, ORF Systems Architect. sequently decided to • Profium News Agency Solution - adopt the Schemalogic Essa Suurio, Profium Sales Man- ystem for NewsCodes ager. management and devel- • Agencia EFE - an overview of the opment. history and activities of the Span- • The Challenge of New ish News Agency EFE was pro- Media - Scott Calder, vided by Jose Luis del Rey, while Mainstream Data. One of the presentations at the 2006 Spring Manual Fuentes described the • News domain research Meeting (in Vancouver) was from Jeff Sedlik of evolution of the EFE news and projects that have been the photo-licensing PLUS Coalition. photo databases. undertaken at the Uni- Appreciation of the benefits of working • SchemaLogic Taxonomy Man- versidad Carlos II de together has resulted in the PLUS coalition agement - Breanna Anderson, Madrid - Professor Luis becoming members of IPTC, while IPTC are Chief Technology Officer Sche- Sánches Fernández. part of the PLUS Leadership Circle.
the IPTC Mirror (Issue 100). rillot and IPTC Managing Director Public Michael Steidl toured the exhibition Standards naming Establishing a name for the new area at NEXPO 2006 (in the USA) set of standards based on the NAR to contact relevant companies and Relations issue invitations to a IPTC presen- proved time consuming, with input from many members and detailed tation held by the NAA Wire Com- consideration of several options mittee. before a conclusion was reached. This was to include the “G2" identi- WAN presentation Ensuring that the news industry fier as the last part of each stan- In his role as IPTC Managing Di- remains aware of what IPTC is dards name - as with NewsML-G2. rector Stéphane Guérillot was in- doing, and encouraging organi- A particular advantage of this ap- vited to give a presentation to the sations to join the organisation proach is that it maintains the iden- Digital Technology Round Table at is the task of the Public Rela- tity of well established standards the World Association of Newspa- tions Committee, though much like NewsML (which is a registered pers (WAN) Congress in Moscow. of the actual work is done by the IPTC trademark) and SportsML His theme was the importance of members - as with other IPTC while making it clear that they are IPTC standards to the success of activities. members of an integrated family of print and digital technology. Press releases are issued to standards. cover significant developments, Steps are now under way to de- Standards adoption generally following IPTC Meetings, velop a unified corporate identity IPTC Managing Director Michael which is when the main decisions for the G2-standards, which will Steidl made two visits to Italy dur- are reached and standards re- probably be extended to cover the ing 2006 , giving presentations in leased. These releases are freely IPTC Web site and the publica- conjunction with the decision of the distributed by member organisa- tions. main Italian news agencies to tions, who also issue their own re- A similar task - but somewhat adopt NewsML and the IPTC Sub- leases on IPTC related matters easier - was to establish the ject NewsCodes. Michael also par- when appropriate. names to be used for identification ticipated in the CEPIC Congress An archive of previous press re- of the various NewsCode groups. 2006, where he outlined the fea- leases is maintained at tures of IPTC photo metadata and www.iptc.org/pages/prel_main.php took part in a panel discussion on to provide a ready reference to the Industry contact the future of metadata. main announcements. Direct contact with the news indus- Rounding off the presentations Similarly copies of the IPTC Mir- try has proved an effective way of for 2006, Michael Steidl and Taka- ror Newsletter and the annual getting the message across. For hiro Fujiwara (Vice-Chair of the IPTC Spectrum are available from example immediately following the NewsML 1 Working Party) were http://www.iptc.org/pages/nlett Spring Meeting a team consisting guest speakers at the Korean _main.php with issues reaching of PR Committee Chair Walter Ba- Press Foundation NewsML Semi- back to the August 2001 issue of ranger, IPTC Chair Stéphane Gué- nar held in Seoul in November.
10 IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 STANDARDS Sustained Commitment
As a statement of intention “The graphic applications resulted in basic goal of the News Architec- establishment of a Photo Metadata ture is to provide a single ge- Working Group. This group will neric model for exchanging all deal with all photo metadata re- kinds of newsworthy informa- lated areas within the IPTC. tion, thus providing a framework for the new IPTC G2 Family of Concept News Exchange Standards” ap- Underlying concept behind the pears relatively straightforward. NAR is the relationship between Converting this aim to a working “real life” occurrences and “news” standard - the NAR - has proved in the broadest sense. Journalistic much less straightforward and has input is needed to convert the taken a lot of hard work, making occurence into “news” which may heavy demands on the resources be in any media - text, audio, photo available to IPTC and requiring a or video - or a combination of me- lot of commitment from the devel- dia. However, this is not enough on opment team. It has also proved its own, for the “news” to be effec- particularly time consuming, but it tively processed, published, is intended that the first standards stored, and reused requires the ad- based on the NAR will become dition of detailed information about available during 2007. the content - or metadata. Other information can comple- Established standards ment the news, and help provide a Although success of NAR develop- context, and this takes the form of ment is very important to the future concepts. Concepts may represent of IPTC standards work as a real objects, such as people, Overview whole, not all of the available re- places and organisations, or more sources can be devoted as the abstract ideas like football and Hard work by the development NAR. The established standards - business. team has formalised the NewsML 1, NITF, SportsML, In the NAR individual pieces of relationship between real life NewsCodes and the IPTC Core - news and concepts are handled as and news content to give a also need attention so they will specific items which have unique Release Candidate for the News continue to meet the needs of their identifiers and share a common set Architecture. A demanding set large user bases. of management features. Consis- of objectives has been met with Achievements in this area in- tency within, and between, items the specification subjected to clude new releases of both the is achieved by the use of generic extensive testing. NITF and SportsML in DTD and components which have precise A new Photo Metadata XML Schema versions, and devel- meanings and processing models, Working Group has started opment of a XML Schema for and by a standard mechanism for work, establishing the NewsML. handling metadata. availability of software for First steps have been taken Use of a generic approach also existing IPTC photo metadata towards a major revision of the means that it will be easier to pro- standards and working towards NewsCodes - IPTC’s famiy of con- vide extensions to meet future re- the requirements for a trolled vocabularies. This is partly quirements, while retaining the seamless photo workflow. in response to the increased meta- underlying structure. The NITF has responded to data demands of the G2-stan- developing user requirements dards, but also reflects the Industry standards with the latest release (v3.4) importance of the NewsCodes as So far as possible the NAR makes available in both DTD and XML stand-alone standards which have use of industry standards that will Schema forms. applications beyond that of the allow processing with standard NewsML 1 continues to be an news industry. Initial focus of this tools. The syntax is based on XML attractive proposition for news work is the production of a new- (Extensible Markup Language) organisations wishing to adopt generation system of Subject and the design takes account of XML based systems, with an NewsCodes. Semantic Web requirements, sim- XML Schema version under Appreciation of the growing im- plifying the transfer of news and development. portance of metadata to photo- concepts to other XML standards.
IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 11 STANDARDS
Working Parties and Groups
Direction of IPTC technical activities is the task of the Standards Committee, which allocates resources for new developments, and the maintenance of established standards. Work is undertaken by a set of Working Parties and Groups dealing with specific areas and reporting back to the Standards Committee which provides formal approval of standards, and other material, so it can be released for public use. Chair: Henrik Stadler (TT). Henrik Stadler News Architecture (NAR) Working Party: Development of a generic architectural framework (NAR) suitable for the management and distribution Laurent Le of all types of news-related content. This includes guiding development of Meur XML Schemas, which are being produced by outside consultants. The NAR will be the basis of the new G2-standards family. Chair: Laurent Le Meur (Agence France Presse). Vice-Chair Misha Wolf (Reuters Ltd). During the initial development phase work on different aspects of the NAR was carried out by a series of Working Groups: Common Components - components that will be used in more than one of Mischa the new content standards. Lead Johan Lindgren (TT). Wolf News Structure - an abstract model for the NAR framework. Lead: Laurent Le Meur (AFP). Johnn News Management - processing models for all types of news content Lindgren covered by recent IPTC news exchange standards. Lead: Stuart Myles (Dow Jones). News Metadata Framework - specification of the ways in which metadata will be expressed, referenced and managed in all new major versions of IPTC standards. Lead: Misha Wolf (Reuters). These Working Groups have completed their tasks and have now been Stuart incorporated directly into the NAR Working Party. Myles News Content Working Party: Oversees the maintenance and Alan Karben development of standards for all types of news related content mark up, with work being the responsibility of a series of Working Groups. Chair (interim): Henrik Stadler (TT). NewsML-G2 - a standard based on the NAR that can be used for the mark up of any kind of general news content. Lead: Laurent Le Meur (AFP). EventsML-G2 - a NAR based format for the exchange of information on newsworthy events. Lead: Johan Lindgren (TT). John SportsML - SportsML is a XML based Sports Markup Language. Lead: Alan Minting Karben (XML Team Solutions). Vice-Lead: Johan Lindgren (TT). ProgramGuideML - a XML based standard for the exchanging TV and Radio Honor Craig- program listings. Bennet NewsCodes Working Party: Responsible for the maintenance of established IPTC metadata sets and the development of new sets as appropriate. Chair: John Minting (UPI). Vice-Chair: Honor Craig-Bennett (PA News). NITF Maintenance Working Party: Maintenance and further development Dean Large of the News Industry Text Format (NITF). Chair: Alan Karben (XML Team Solutions). Vice-Chair: Stuart Myles (Dow Jones).
Takahiro NewsML 1 Maintenance Working Party: Promotion of NewsML as the Fujiwara standard packaging and syndication mechanism for multimedia news with maintenance of the functional specification and production of implementation guidelines. Chair: Dean Large (Businesswire). Vice-Chair: Takahiro Fujiwara (EAST Co. Ltd). Photo Metadata Working Group: Acts as a special interest group regarding all photo metadata issues of the IPTC, providing support to all current IPTC Harald Löffler standards in all photo related areas, including the development of specific photo metadata standards. Lead: Harald Löffler (Ifra). Vice-Lead: Michael Michael Steidl (IPTC). Steidl
12 IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 STANDARDS
The NAR Model is independent design for representing newswor- Profiles of the way it is implemented. How- thy information. The all-inclusive nature of these ever, a XML Schema implementa- • To be flexible, thus allowing light- objectives has inevitability resulted tion will be provided, as it is weight “no bells and whistles” in a degree of tension within the believed that this will be the type of feeds and highly complex news development process as, for ex- software most commonly adopted. feeds, based on the same model. ample, attempts are made to rec- Alternatively the model could be • To specify more details, leaving oncile the requirement for implemented using object-oriented less space for interpretation. simplicity and interoperability with software, in Java, or in C#. • To streamline the processing the aim of handling highly complex It is important to remember that model, providing only a single news feeds. Provision of alterna- the NAR is not itself a news ex- way to express specific struc- tive “core” and “power” profiles has change standard. Different types tures and functionalities. provided a solution to this problem. of news content have very specific • To develop a new model for ex- A similar approach is also being requirement and these are catered pressing metadata from the considered for the NITF. for by a set of individual standards, ground up. In the NAR the “core” profile is the IPTC G2-standards. • To provide an abstract model to kept as simple as possible, for in- Initial efforts have been concen- be implemented by specific news teroperability and ease of imple- trated on a general news standard exchange standards. mentation, while the “power” NewsML-G2 (as a successor to • To maintain, at the functional profile provides a much higher de- NewsML 1), EventsML-G2 and rather than syntactic level, a high gree of flexibility, at the cost of re- SportsML-G2. level of backward compatibility duced interoperability and a more with NewsML 1. complex implementation. The News exchange standards • To simplify the implementation of power level also makes extensive All of these news standards will IPTC news exchange standards provision for user extensions. have the NAR as their underlying as a whole. framework, using the common • To align IPTC news exchange Processing items and components. Since the standards with requirements from Processing systems have to spec- standards will have a consistent the “Information Highway”. ify which level of functionality they structure, and a consistent way of managing individual items and of dealing with the associated meta- data, systems will be easier to un- derstand and implement. The approach also provides a high level of compatibility for the infor- mation dealt with by each of the standards. Another aspect of the “real life” approach is that information about a specific concept will probably be available from a number of differ- ent information providers. This in- formation will have a consistent structure so it will be possible to use the separate items together, giving a whole that will be more than the sum of its parts. It is antici- pated that extensive use of this feature may lead to a market of knowledge information.
Aims In more detail the aims for NAR de- velopment are: • To simplify and unify the overall
Underlying concept of the News Architecture is the relationship between things happening in the real world and the resulting news content. Some specific metadata is associated with the content, with common metadata components being used for description and to provide management features.
IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 13 STANDARDS - PHOTO METADATA
support, with “power” level sys- underlying technologies are them- application development are not tems providing all of the “core” selves under active development. always fully compliant with the lat- functionality as well as the “power” To some extent the generic design est proposals, and may not be to- extensions. The “core” level sys- approach adopted for the NAR will tally consistent in their tems should still be able to deal make it easier to cater for new de- interpretation of the standards (tool with “power” level items by ignoring velopments, but some advanced developers also have problems in the additional information. features of the NAR have been keeping up with XML develop- based on technology that is itself at ments). Advanced technologies an experimental stage. Similarly the aim of aligning stan- Use of advanced XML tech- Testing dards with the “Information High- niques can raise another problem The need to ensure that the NAR way is complicated by the fact the in that the software tools used for objectives are being met, in a man- Photo Metadata
Specifically, this group will: This will explain the importance of • Support the development of ge- metadata for the news and photo Introduction of the IPTC Core neric IPTC photo metadata stan- industries and provide a summary (for XMP) in 2005 provided a new dards. of the metadata needed to cover way of handling the “IPTC • Act as a standing group of ex- Descriptive, Administrative, Rights Headers” which can be used to perts to respond to issues raised and Technical Properties. hold a wide range of information by external parties. Technical considerations related about an image. to metadata implementation will be The IPTC Core has proved to be Software support looked at. Specific consideration of a popular initiative, and a series of As one of the first actions of the typical photo workflows will cover suggestions for improvements and new Group, a survey was under- the following: Photographer, News extensions had been raised. At the taken to establish how software Photo Agency, Stock Photo same time a related effort had providers support the existing Agency, Newspaper, and Maga- been under way with the Colour photo metadata standards of the zine. Space Task Force - in association Information Interchange Model with IFRA - investigating ways of (IIM) - the well known “IPTC Head- Seamless workflow ensuring that the EXIF-JPEG cam- ers” are a subset of the IIM data This work will be complemented by era data would be retained through fields - and the IPTC Core. a one day conference, with the title the processing. Over fifty software packages “Working towards a seamless As work in these areas pro- were identified and the full list, in- photo workflow”. ceeded it became clear that these cluding details of which standards Goal of the conference is to sim- initiatives were only dealing with are supported and whether there is plify the convergence and global some aspects of what was a much synchronisation between the IIM applicability of photo metadata, wider interest area - that of photo and IPTC Core values, has been and maximise the widespread and metadata in general. made publicly available at consistent implementation of stan- Discussions with other interested http://www.iptc.org/photometadata dards. parties - including new IPTC mem- /softwaresupportlist1.php. Participants will include both bers with a special interest in the Subsequent investigations have photo creators and users, along photo area - reinforced the belief shown that a number of organisa- with photo standards organisa- that this was an area that needed tions appear to be providing sug- tions, software providers, and serious consideration. gestions for use of the “IPTC camera manufacturers. The inten- Headers” though their recommen- tion is to analyse current metadata Working Group dations of how fields may be used practices and establish the best Accordingly a new Photo Metadata do not always seem to be in agree- way of achieving a seamless work- Working Group was established at ment with one another, or with the flow from camera to the end user. the 2006 AGM. Objectives of this IIM. This confusion is a further indi- The Conference is being organ- group are to act as a special inter- cation of the need for proper con- ised in conjunction with Ifra and est group for all photo metadata re- sideration of the requirements for held in conjunction with the CEPIC lated issues within the IPTC. photo metadata. (Coordination of European Picture This work is not focussed on a Agencies Press Stock Heritage) single standard but will support all Metadata requirements Congress 2007 in Florence. See current IPTC standards in photo To help establish the requirements http://www.phmdc.org/ for further related areas. a White Paper is being produced. details.
14 IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 STANDARDS - NITF
ner that will be as easy to use and life use cases against the NAR Trial applications as trouble free as possible, re- model and syntax, with particular The updated specification was sulted in the decision to undertake attention to the handling of single then subjected to a second Experi- a series of tests at different devel- and multimedia test feeds, object mental Phase (EP#2) where the opment stages. orientated applications, the persis- main aim was to investigate practi- In each case this involved prepa- tence of news objects (as in a rela- cal aspects of using the architec- ration of extensive test packages tional database), navigation ture to build content standards. that included an introductory docu- between news objects, and the use Working groups for the new IPTC ment, model specifications, imple- of style sheets for conversion be- content standards (NewsML-G2, mentation of the specifications as tween NewsML1 and NewsML-G2. EventsML-G2 and SportsML-G2) XML Schema, and supporting ma- Results showed a number of ar- were specifically asked to partici- terial. Producing all this was an eas where improvements could be pate, along with other parties who added workload for the develop- made, while further changes and could apply the NAR to their own ment team. additions were introduced as a re- use cases. The initial Experimental Phase sult of continuing development This phase proved particularly (EP#1) was carried out to test real work during the test period. valuable in identifying a number of News Industry
Text to indicate, for example, people, Schema adoption as this version places, organisations, emphasised offers a specific feature that cannot text and hyperlinks. be provided in the DTD version of Format Since the standard has been in the standard. This is to allow the in- use for some years (it was clusion of namespaced elements launched in 1999) with regular up- (material from another XML dates it has been developed to the Schema with its own namespace) stage at which it meets most user within the enriched text area of a The NITF was the first XML- requirements. Current requests for NITF instance (this allows the im- based standard developed by changes and enhancements are port of external material, with its the IPTC (being based on an relatively minor. For example with characteristics set by its own XML earlier SGML - Standard Gener- release v3.4 a change was made Schema). alised Markup Language - ver- to allow the use of multiple
IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 15 STANDARDS - NEWSML 1
areas in which improvements specification will be possible at the specification documents are con- could be made. Discussion of the IPTC 2007 AGM. sistent and provide a high level of results at the Autumn 2006 Meet- clarity. The XML Schema imple- ing raised further concerns, which Implementation mentation takes the form of a were also taken care of to give a Implementation of the NAR in XML “Master” file which includes both NAR Release candidate. This was Schema is being carried out by “core” and “power” features, with a made public in January 2007 for consultants, who are also under- (internal use) XML Schema gener- comment and it is planned that for- taking a quality assurance assess- ator being provided to create indi- mal approval of the NAR structure ment to ensure that the vidual Schema for each profile.
NewsML 1
Although work on the next- simple implementations can be dealt with. It was considered par- generation NewsML-G2 is under developed. ticularly important to ensure trou- way, interest in NewsML 1 con- The planned successor stan- ble free operation as a number of tinues to run at a high level. dard, NewsML-G2, draws on the users intend to implement XML There is a well established, concepts underlying NewsML 1 Schema systems that will work world-wide, user base with con- and experience gained in its appli- alongside established DTD based siderable application expertise, cation. A key aim with NewsML-G2 systems. coupled with a substantial is to maintain a high level of back- group of system suppliers offer- wards compatibility with NewsML Continued appeal ing NewsML compliant systems. 1, so there should be straightfor- Since NewsML 1 is an established, Providing a structured frame- ward update paths for current and well proven, standard it has con- work for multimedia news, prospective users when this is con- siderable appeal for news organi- NewsML 1 is a XML based stan- sidered necessary. sations wishing to introduce XML dard that can be applied through- Since efforts have been concen- based news systems with multime- out the news lifecycle. Typical trated on the new standard, devel- dia capability. applications include; in and be- opment of NewsML 1 has been In June 2006 the Federation of tween editorial systems; between frozen at v1.2. However, work on a Newspaper Publishers in Italy news agencies and their custom- XML Schema has been under- (FIEG) announced that the major ers; between publishers and news taken in response to user require- national Italian news agencies aggregators; and between news ments. (Ansa, AGI, ApCom and ADN Kro- service providers and end users as nos) had agreed to start delivering well as for the creation of news Draft XML Schema their news using NewsML 1. At the content. A Beta draft XML Schema for same time these agencies will be NewsML v1.2 was released in adopting the IPTC Subject News- Metadata provision Summer 2006 and has been sub- Codes for news categorisation. The standard has extensive meta- jected to extensive testing to en- data to cover Administrative, sure its compatibility with other Applications Rights, and Descriptive and News XML products (such as data- Italian system vendors will also be Management requirements, with bases), the ease of data transfer involved with the implementation provision for human-readable ver- between DTD and XML Schema of systems and interfaces to allow sions of appropriate metadata based systems, and the general integration of NewsML content into items such as headlines, rights, validation of NewsML 1 examples. existing systems and content data- dates and keywords. However, Some issue were identified dur- bases. It is anticipated that there there is no need to use all of the ing the tests, and formal release of will be a gradual transition to the available features, so relatively the NewsML v1.2 XML Schema new standard over some years to will take place when these are simplify the adoption process for the news agencies customers. In another development the Ko- Panel at the Korean Seminar held rean Press Foundation (KPF) has to consider adoption of NewsML, been investigating the advantages with Takahiro Fujiwara (East Co. of adopting NewsML within the Ko- Ltd, Vice-Chair IPTC NewsML 1 rean news industry. As part of this Working Party) replying to a effort a “NewsML Seminar” was question from the audience. held in Seoul during November Other members of the panel were Tae-Sung Jung (Yonhap News 2006 with guest presentations Agency, Chair of the Korea Press from IPTC Managing Director Mi- Foundation NewsML Forum), and chael Steidl and Takahiro Fuji- Michael Steidl (IPTC Managing wara, Vice-Chair of the NewsML 1 Director). Working Party of the IPTC.
16 IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 NEWS ARCHITECTURE Common Components - Common Structure - Common Processing
Aim of the News Architecture dustry standards will allow proc- development is to produce a essing with standard software framework for the new second tools, while the design will make it generation IPTC exchange stan- possible to take advantage of de- dards - the IPTC G2-standards. velopments in the underlying XML This has been done by producing technology. a set of standard components and Throughout development a ma- instructions that can be used to jor aim has been to ensure that the handle both “news” and related NAR makes due provision for the “concepts” in a consistent way that information that is needed in typi- is independent of the content being cal news applications, while keep- handled. ing the design as concise and simple as possible. Building blocks Each of the G2-standards will use Conformance levels these News Architecture (NAR) However, it is appreciated that building blocks in the same way so some users will need a high de- speeding their development, and gree of flexibility in the way they application. The NAR model is handle information so two confor- flexible and generic and can be mance levels have been defined. Overview readily extended to deal with as- The core conformance level (CCL) yet unplanned standards. Stan- offers simplicity and a high degree Meeting the requirements for dards currently under development of interoperability, while the power the new News Architecture has cover General News (NewsML- conformance level (PCL) offers been challenging and time G2), Events (EventsML-G2) and greater flexibility at the expense of consuming, but the end result Sports (SportsML-G2). greater complexity and a reduced will provide a secure basis for For users, the applications will level of interoperability. the new generation of IPTC be easier to understand and be standards. faster and less expensive to imple- Content handling There is a set of reusable ment. The NAR makes use of XML A news exchange standard has to components, with content with the initial implementation us- handle the actual news content, being handled by a consistent ing XML Schema. Use of such in- along with associated concepts, family of managed Items. A new mechanism for handling News content is metadata has been developed. carried by the Provision is made for both News Item, one of news and related concepts. a family of Items A core version of the News that have the same basic Architecture provides for structure, and the straightforward applications, same with more demanding administrative requirements catered for by and management power extensions, while metadata provision has been made for features. providers to add features required for their specific Diagram by Athens business needs. Technology Centre.
IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 17 NEWS ARCHITECTURE
and metadata for descriptive and ger from 1 to 9. A typical applica- Date and Time administrative purposes. There tion for the Int1to9Type datatype is Dates and times are taken care of has to be provision to manage and to denote the editorial significance with a group of properties. In addi- package the information, and then of content (in the Administrative tion to the normal calendar date to deliver it. Metadata). with an optional time part these in- To do this the New Architecture clude a TruncatedDateTimeType has a precisely defined set of com- Natural language which consists of a calendar date ponents: Where information is provided in a (and optional time part) that can be • Building blocks - that provide natural language - as with a progressively shortened by omit- ways of representing and proc- human-readable label - the lan- ting one or more parts from the essing specific pieces of infor- guage details have to be included end. This means it is possible to mation. to ensure proper display. This is give just the month and year, for • News Structure - to provide a achieved by use of the i18n Inter- example. standard way of managing indi- nationalisation attributes. For ex- Other datatypes deal with ap- vidual pieces of news content. ample IntlStringType is an proximate, recurring, and ranges • News Metadata - a mechanism internationalised string, while La- of dates and times. for expressing and managing belType is a string with the i18n at- A consistent naming convention descriptive information related to tributes, some with a role qualifier has been used, and all datatypes the content. to identify the function of the label. are identified by having Type as In addition the News Architecture provides the News Message as a mechanism for the exchange of structured information defined us- Controlled Vocabularies and QCodes ing the News Architecture. Each of these constituent parts is The News Architecture makes extensive use of values taken considered in more detail below, from schemes, such as controlled vocabularies. These with particular reference to the controlled values are identified by the combination of the core compliance level. Information scheme and the code from the scheme to give a on the added features offered by {scheme:code} pair which can be identified by processing the power conformance level is in- software. cluded in a separate section Schemes will be identified by URIs (Uniform Resource “Power Extensions” on page 22. Indicators) and combination of a scheme URI and a code will give Throughout, defined NAR terms a concept URI. However, URIs can be fairly long, and the use of a are indicated by the use of italics. series of such references in a news item raises practical problems (for example with transmission capacity).
Common Components Compact syntax Basic building blocks of the NAR Accordingly a compact syntax has been developed to provide an are the common components. efficient way of using controlled values in the NAR. With this an These represent pieces of informa- alias (in the form of a short string) is defined for each of the tion and are context free, but when schemes. A controlled value is then identified by the combination used in business messages they of the scheme alias, a colon “:”, and the appropriate code take on the specific semantics of identifier (from the scheme). The resulting pair (scheme the business context. alias:code) is known as a QCode (Qualified Code). This the Depending on requirements a recommended way of using controlled vocabularies with the News common component may be used Architecture. on its own, or combined with other Some required properties can only take a QCode as their value common components to create and appropriate controlled vocabularies will be available for use larger context-free structures. The with NAR-based standards. However, information providers will reuse of such components helps to also be able to use their own vocabularies for this purpose. ensure design consistency and gives a consistent structure for the Term recovery content across the IPTC G2 Family To recover the actual controlled vocabulary term, the scheme alias of Standards. part of the Qcode is replaced by the appropriate URI . For this, every Item in the NAR has a catalog which contains a mapping Datatypes between each scheme alias used in the Item, and the Finest level building blocks are the corresponding URI. primitive datatypes - such as inte- In some applications a large number of schemes may be used in ger and string - which are found in an Item and, if required, the catalog may be stored as a remote XML Schema or software lan- resource and referenced with a hyperlink. Normally it is anticipated guages, and so are not specifically that information providers will use a consistent set of schemes defined for the NAR. There are which will be referenced for all Items they provide. It will then be also simple datatypes produced by possible for them to supply the set to their customers so it will be applying restrictions to the primi- available as a local resource for processing systems. tive types, so in the NAR the Int1to9Type is defined as an inte-
18 IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 NEWS ARCHITECTURE
the last portion of their name. Second of the family of NAR Items the Properties Concept Item is Pieces of business information are designed to allow the handling of concepts represented by a basic component in the same way as or property which takes a datatype news information. as the model for its content - a da- tatype does not have a specific business meaning on its own. A property can be used on its own or combined with other prop- erties to form a group and is identi- Diagram by Athens Technology Centre. fied by having PropType as the last part of its name - as with Truncat- edDateTimePropType. Person Concept Qualified codes For consistent representation, An indication of how complex aggregate components are many metadata properties are built up from the basic datatypes and properties is given by taken from controlled vocabular- the person details concept (PersonDetailsType) which ies, and these are handled by the contains: use of QCodes (qualified codes). Date of Birth (TruncatedDateTimePropType) Further details on the development Date of Death (TruncatedDateTimePropType) and application ofQCodes are in- Gender (FlexPropType) cluded in the panel an page 18. Contact Information (ContactInfoType) In some case there may not be Affiliation (FlexPropType) an appropriate term available from Occupation (FlexPropType) a controlled vocabulary and to al- Skill (FlexPropType) low for this the FlexPropType Extension Point (flexible property type) may take the form of a value from a con- Here Contact Information is itself a composite datatype trolled vocabulary (QCode) or con- (ContactInfoType) with: sist of a text string. Email Address (ElectronicAddressType) Concepts Instant Messaging Address (ElectronicAddressType) The handling of concepts is an im- Phone Number (ElectronicAddressType) portant feature of the News Archi- Fax Number (ElectronicAddressType) tecture, and an aggregate Concept Web Address (WebAddressType) Component has been developed Postal Address (PostalAddressType) for this purpose. Extension Point There are two main types of con- (Both ElectronicAddressType and WebAddressType are strings cept, named entities - real objects extended by the additional of Roles - which take the form of such as people and places - and QCodes.) generic (or abstract) concepts. Ge- neric concepts cover a broad Again, Postal Address is a composite datatype range from themes - such as music (PostalAddressType) made up from: and football - to specific emotions. Role (QCodeType) Properties common to all con- Address Line (IntlStringType) cepts are dealt with by the Concept Locality (FlexPropType) Type which makes provision for an Country Area (FlexPropType) unambiguous identifier, an indica- Country (FlexPropType) tion of the type of concept (in the Postal Code (IntlStringType) form of a QCode), a Concept Infor- mation Group and an Entity Details Basic datatypes and properties are shown in blue, with composite Group. components shown in red.
Relationships The other entity components are constructed in the same way, Information handled by the Con- again making use of the common datatypes and components. So cept Information Group consists of Contact Info for Organisation and Point of Interest uses the a natural language name and defi- common composite ContactInfoType. nition together with a set of proper- Note that the composite components include extension points. ties that may be used to provide These are provided to let information providers add other alternative identifications for the properties that they need to meet their specific business concept - sameAs - and to estab- requirements. lish relationships between con-
IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2007 19 NEWS ARCHITECTURE
cepts - broader, narrower and Any Item is given in the panel. being a news report (text), a pic- related. These relationships may A set of four Items (News Item, ture, or a video clip. Typically there be used to create taxonomies (hi- Concept Item, Package Item and will only be short term interest in erarchies of concepts) and the- Knowledge Item) have been de- the content which will be updated sauri (sets of concepts associated fined to cater for all of the currently over a short period but may then be via the relationships). planned G2-standards, but future archived. The content may refer to Any given concept may be identi- standards may need additional a set of concepts and entities, and fied by a controlled value, but the dedicated Items. These will also be be associated with other News nature of concepts means that the based on the Any Item and inherit Items or Web resources. same concept could be present in the same basic parts, which will be Administrative and management more than one controlled vocabu- complemented by application spe- properties inherited from the Any lary (possibly from different provid- cific extensions. Item are complemented by Con- ers) and so have several tent Metadata and a News Content identifiers. An example of this is NewsItem Set - which may consist of a set of the way that a company can be News content - in any media type alternative renditions - such as an identified by a number of different or format - is handled by the image in thumbnail, preview and “ticker” symbols. This is why the NewsItem with typical examples high resolution versions. concept identifier has to be unam- biguous (but not unique). Any Item Entities More detailed provision has been The Item is the basic piece of managed information in the made for entities with the following News Architecture and the abstract Any Item is a template for aggregate components: all NAR Items. It provides a common structure and metadata: • Person Details - dates of birth and death, gender, contact infor- Schema Version An indication of the XML Schema version mation affiliation, occupation, specifying the item. and skill. Conformance Level Conformance level of the item (either “core” • Organisation Details - dates of or “power”). foundation and dissolution, con- tact information, business sec- Item Identifier A globally unique identifier - a guid.This is needed tor, and business location. to identify the item as it moves through the workflow and is • Geopolitical Area - geographic transferred between systems. co-ordinates, and geopolitical Item Version To allow for updates of an Item. type. • Point of Interest Details - geo- Catalog Identification of schemes used for metadata values (See graphic co-ordinates, opening “Controlled Vocabularies and Qcodes on page 18). hours, capacity, contact informa- Rights Information At the “core” level this is a container for a set tion, point of interest type, facil- of properties related to rights and licensing. ity, access and location details. Item Metadata Metadata that relates to the Item as a whole, and not only to the content. Provider extensions Item Management Group Management properties including Extension Points are provided in provider, creation date and time and class (this helps indicate aggregate components so infor- the structure of the item) which are mandatory. Optional mation providers can include their information includes an embargo date, the publishing status own defined properties to meet (this is “usable” by default), state of evolution, a recommended specific business requirements. file name, editorial service, title (in a natural language), editorial Similarly provision is made for the note (also natural language) and an editorial signal (for the addition of provider-defined qualifi- processing system) ers to any property of an instance Item Link See panel on page 21 for details. document. Extension Point For including additional provider-defined properties. Content Metadata Metadata directly related to the content carried Items An item is the smallest piece of in- by the Item. formation that can be managed Specialised Items developed from the Any Item will include their within the NAR, and to maintain own sets of descriptive metadata here. consistency all Items are derived Administrative Metadata Included as part of the Content from an abstract Any Item. This de- Metadata with a set of optional properties to describe features fines a structure and sets of meta- that are not directly presented in the content. These include the data for administrative and date of creation and modification, place of creation, editorial management purposes, all of significance, source of information, creator and contributor (a which are inherited by the other person or an organisation) and the intended audience. Items. Further information on the
20 IPTC Spectrum - No 21- 2006 NEWS ARCHITECTURE
Content may be present as an in- The Knowledge and Package line XML component or an inline Items complete the initial set data component (plaintext or of four Items specified for use base64 encoded). Alternatively the in the News Architecture. content may be remote and identi- fied by a hyperlink. A group of con- tent attributes may be used to provide an indication of the rendi- tion, type and format of the con- tent. The News Content Metadata has its own administrative metadata (to deal with the content, and so sepa- rate from the Item administrative properties) along with a set of me- tadata - the NewsDescriptiveMeta- Diagrams by Athens dataGroup - to describe the Technology Centre. content. This group covers the lan- guage, genre and subject of the dition of Content Metadata and a of news items, or a set of items re- content, and makes provision for Concept Set - a set of concept defi- lating to the same event. The Slugline, Headline, and Descrip- nitions grouped together into a Package Item provides a way of tion (individually defined). consistent structure, which is then presenting a set of items in a struc- The News Item is the main ele- managed and applied as a whole. tures manner, expressed as a hier- ment of NewsML-G2, which is an Concepts in the set may be of dif- archy. exchange standard for general ferent types and their identifiers The Package Item does not carry news in all media types. In this come from separate schemes. any content directly, instead it pro- standard the news content meta- Normally the content of a Knowl- vides a set of references to individ- data is extended to include a set of edge Item will be of long-term inter- ual Items (or to Web resources), typical media characteristics. est and updated infrequently but which are produced and managed over an extended period (with evo- independently. Concept Item lution of the controlled vocabulary In addition to the management Generally similar to the News Item, it holds). properties and administrative me- the Concept Item is designed to tadata inherited from the Any Item convey information about con- Package Item the Package Item has its own Con- cepts. It has the common Item News content is often delivered as tent Metadata, which includes a components - with management a related group of items, such as a Package Descriptive Metadata properties and administrative me- collection of pictures, a “top ten” list Group (with the same features as tadata - along with a set of Content Metadata and a Concept Compo- nent (as previously described). Linking Features Main characteristics of a Con- cept Item is that it is focused an a The use of links makes it possible to create a network of single concept (which may be an news resources and the link component provides a generic entity), and that there is long term mechanism for linking NAR Items to one another and to Web interest for the content, which will resources. be updated infrequently but over a Links are expressed as a hypertext reference (href), and to long period of time as the concept simplify processing the content type and size of the target can be develops. included in the linking information. Typical functions are: When a NAR compliant server is Navigation links between one Item and another Item or a Web queried to obtain information on a resource. An article about a person might be linked to their concept it will return the appropri- biography, or sections of transcripts can be linked to one another ate Concept Item (or Items). in order. Derivation links for the expression of parent/child relationships. Knowledge Item Common application would be the link between the translation of As the name suggests the Knowl- an article and the original article, or between a processed image edge Item is intended to providing and the source picture. a way of presenting a specific set Dependency links for use when external Items are needed to of information, such as the IPTC provide a full representation of the content of an Item. For example Subject NewsCodes or a provid- with an illustrated article the textual content of the News Item will er’s list of audience codes. Provid- contain a reference to the image (or images), which is represented ers may use Knowledge Items to by another News Item. A dependency link establishes the need to make sets of codes available to retrieve the picture News Item to produce a complete article. their customers. Composition links are used to aggregate the Items in a Package The Knowledge Item has the nor- Item. mal Item components with the ad-
IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 21 NEWS ARCHITECTURE
the News Descriptive Metadata Group). The content is a Group Set which News Message represents a tree of sub-groups and references to items. Individual Designed as a mechanism for item exchange, the News groups may have different roles Message is an optional part of the NAR. and the elements in a group may Other exchange protocols, including SOAP (Simple Object be complementary or alternative, Access Protocol), WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and while their order may also be rele- Versioning), ICE (Information and Content Exchange) and the vant. Atom Publication Protocol, which provide a wrapping message, are just as appropriate, with the choice depending on the information providers’ normal practice. Processing model The News Message has a simple structure with a message The News Architecture conceptual header and a set of items. Header information consists of: Date of model is complemented by a Proc- transmission, sender, Transmission Identifier, Priority, Origin essing Model which provides guid- Destination, Channel and Extension Point, with the only ance on the implementation of mandatory element being the Date of Transmission. NAR compliant systems. Any defined NAR Item (initially the NewsItem, Concept Item, and Specific aspects covered in- Package Item) or combination of items can be carried, with the clude: XML representation of each item being directly included in the • Accessing and checking cata- News Message. logs, including remote catalogs. • Obtaining human readable infor- mation about schemes and code, and retrieving all terms of a scheme. • Processing the item status. Pub- lishing status values are Usable, Withheld and Cancelled, along with Embargoed and Expired. • Retrieval of linked resources and processing of the link prop- erty. • Managing dates (and times) of
items. Athens Technology Centre.
Power Extensions • Support for rich text and ruby mark-up in labels Simplicity and interoperability are key features and blocks. of the News Architecture “core conformance • Concept relationship properties have a qualifier level” (CCL), but some providers have to establish validity over time and additional particularly demanding applications, and their qualifier for the relationship properties. needs are catered for with the “power • Multiple sets of contact information are conformance level” (PCL). supported. Features available at the power conformance At Item level, there is provision for a digital level are extensions to the core conformance signature to be applied to complete Items, or to level. This means that it will be possible for parts of Items, while rights information can be processing systems that are CCL compliant to applied to individual parts of the content. deal with PCL instances by ignoring the additional information, while PCL systems will be able to RDF Compatibility handle CCL feeds. An underlying aim with NAR development was to achieve compatibility with the Semantic Web and Common components to help achieve this the metadata model can be Power extensions applied to the common transformed to the Resource Description components include; Framework (RDF). • Addition of editing qualifiers to allow identification One way this can be done is by using the of the creator and details of modifications to GRDDL (Gleaning Resource Descriptions from metadata. Dialects of Languages) mechanism, and a • Extended use of i18n attributes to allow fine GRDDL reference can be included at the root of a grained control of language information. NAR item. However, it is important to note that • Extensive additions to flexible properties use of the NAR does not require any knowledge of • Development of composite concepts. RDF.
22 IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 NEWS CONTENT Information Exchange
Since the planned new genera- sion to concentrate efforts on pro- tion content standards - duction of a model that could be NewsML-G2 and EventsML-G2 used for the exchange of all types will be built using the News Ar- of news content - the News Archi- chitecture (NAR), detailed work tecture. Separate standards for on them had to wait until the specific types of content would NAR model was substantially then be built on the framework pro- complete. However, initial work vided by the NAR on these standards was a major With the NAR well advanced, the factor in the launch of the News Working Groups responsible for Architecture project. the new content standards have When the EventsML and been able to start detailed work. NewsML business requirements were examined it was clear that General news there were many common fea- NewsML-G2 is the new standard tures, and that it would be a poor for general news, handling text, use of resources to have two photos, graphics, video or other groups seeking solutions to the media. It can be considered as of- same problems. At the same time fering similar functions to the news Overview work was under way to investigate mark-up parts of NewsML 1, with alternative ways of handling meta- improved metadata handling fea- Development of the G2- data (partly as the system used in tures and the consistent approach standards for content exchange NewsML 1 was seen as complex of the G2-standards family. has had to wait for the IPTC and difficult to implement). Main element of NewsML-G2 is News Architecture to become the NAR News Item, which in- available. However, work on New model cludes a set of “typical” media NewsML-G2, EventsML-G2 and Initial moves were made to ensure characteristics. This is only a small SportsML-G2 is now under way. closer co-operation in these areas, set and individual providers can Popularity of SportsML but further analysis of the relation- add further characteristics that continues to grow with regular ships between news content and they consider necessary. The NAR updates and extensions. real life events resulted in the deci- Concept, Package and Knowledge Items are also included.
Events and Sports Media Characteristics for NewsML-G2 EventsML-G2 is a way of allowing the exchange of information about Text: Word count. events - or “things that happen”, Photo: Image Width, Image Height, Image Orientation, Image and for an event to be considered ColorSpace, Resolution. news it has to be covered in some way. Aspects to be handled in- Graphic: Resolution, Image Height, Width and Orientation (as for clude: publishing information about photos), Resolution Duration (as for audio and video). events; managing the coverage of an event; and providing informa- Audio: AudioCodec; Duration, Audio Bit Rate, Audio Variable Bit tion about how an event is being - Rate Flag, Audio Sample Size, Audio Sample Rate, Audio or will be - covered. Channels. Although details have still to be Video: Image Height, and Width (as for photos), VideoCodec, finalised, EventsML-G2 will define Duration, Video Average Bit Rate, Video Variable Bit Rate Flag a set of event-specific properties Width, Video Frame Rate, Average Bit Rate, Video Scan which may be used in a NewsItem Technique, Video Aspect Ratio, Video Sampling Method. as content or in a ConceptItem to indicate persisting knowledge The above set of media characteristics have been proposed for about an event. use with NewsML-G2. The set has been kept small, but users will SportsML-G2 will take advan- be able to add additional characteristics that they consider tage of NAR features to give en- appropriate for their content. hanced publishing and rights handling features, and improved
IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 23 NEWS CONTENT - NEWSCODES
metadata rights management, as dividuals. The scope of the infor- well as compatibility with other mation is such that many sports Olympic Reports standards in the G2 family. can be dealt with by the core alone. Coverage of the 2006 Torino Win- Results for the 2006 Torino High interest ter Olympics was provided this way Winter Olympics were The established version of - see panel. There is also provision supplied to the websites of a SportsML continues to attract a for wagering statistics. large number of US high level of interest - the public newspapers using a system discussion group has over 500 Plug-ins based on the SportsML members - and is regularly up- Plug-in modules provide a high core. dated to provide enhancements level of detail to cover actions that In the system (developed and extensions with version 1.8 a specific to individual sports. For for the Associated Press by now available in both DTD and example during 2006 feedback XML Team) the official XML Schema forms. from a Major League Baseball Olympics WNPA feed was The standard has a core module Club resulted in a number of en- converted to SportsML and to handle information that is com- hancements to the baseball plug-in passed to a database. New mon to all sports, with a series of with a typical change being the ad- SportsML output was then plug-in modules dealing with infor- dition of coverage for “umpire call”. generated by a series of mation that only applies to a spe- Plug-ins are available for Ameri- database queries, and cific sport. can Football, Baseball, Basketball, formatted into HTML pages Typical core information includes Ice Hockey, Soccer, Tennis, Golf, for supply to the newspaper scores, standings, schedules and Motor Racing, with the most recent web sites. statistics, both for teams and for in- addition being for Curling. A Good Description
Introduction of the IPTC G2- Codes. Details of all of the Sets are Family of Standards family will given in the panel opposite. place additional demands on the IPTC NewsCodes - which are a Availability series of standard sets of meta- All of the NewsCodes are available data that can be applied to news for free use, and can be down- objects, and allow consistent loaded from the NewsCodes sec- coding across the industry and tion of the IPTC Web site over time. (www.newscodes.org)asXML These NewsCodes are already files in the form of NewsML 1 Topic in widespread use, with the estab- Sets. lished IPTC exchange standards In keeping with other IPTC stan- and and elsewhere, so there is a dards the NewsCodes are devel- continuing programme of additions oped and maintained in English, and updates to the existing sets in but several of the sets have been response to user needs. New translated into other languages - NewsCode sets are also devel- including French, German, Italian, Overview oped when specific requirements Japanese, and Spanish - by IPTC are identified. members - and these translated Maintenance updates of the sets are also available. IPTC NewsCodes have been Application sets Although the words for the terms, complemented by a thorough At the moment there are twenty-six and their associated explanations, review of all sets. Introduction NewsCode sets available for use, entries change with translation the of the G2-standards will make but their exact application is not al- “formal name” of each code is nu- increasing demands, with ways immediately apparent. To meric and so is language inde- additional NewsCode sets help make things clearer the codes pendent. being required. have been sorted into four specific There is also a NewsCodes First steps have been taken application sets - Descriptive viewer. This is a Windows applica- towards the production of a NewsCodes, Administrative News- tion that provides an easy way to new generation version of the Codes, Transmission NewsCodes navigate through the codes and Subject NewsCodes. and Exchange Format News- compare translations.
24 IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 NEWSCODES
As with other IPTC standards Review rected in two main directions, a use of the NewsCodes is subject to In preparation for the introduction comprehensive review of the exist- the provision of the IPTC Intellec- of the G2-standards, and to meet ing NewsCode sets, and the devel- tual Property Policy - see the developing needs of estab- opment of new-generation sets. An http://www.iptc.org/goto/ipp. lished users, work has been di- extensive review of the Subject IPTC NewsCodes
Descriptive NewsCodes Exchange Format NewsCodes Taxonomies for description of the content of news Taxonomies to support specific functionalities of items. the different IPTC news exchange format standards. Genre Describes the nature, journalistic or intellectual characteristic of a news object, but not Characteristics Property Names (not values!) specifically its content. to describe physical characteristics of content - Scene Describes the scene covered by the such as “width” and “height” for photos, or content. “sampling rate” for audio. Subject Code A three level system for describing Confidence The degree of certainty that data content by. Some1300 terms are available and assigned are correct. several terms can be assigned to a single news Encoding Popular encoding schemes used to object to give a very precise description of the transform data. content. Format Technical format of a content - JPG for The top level has seventeen main Subjects, the a picture, MP3 for audio or NITF or PDF for a second level a series of SubjectMatter under each document. Subject, and the third level provides How Present Describes the way in which a SubjectDetails under the SubjectMatters. topic occurs in the content of a news object. Subject Qualifier Subject Qualifiers provide a Importance Relative significance of the narrower attribute-like context - typically for a metadata applied to a news object. sports-related subject code (such as the gender of Labeltype The type of a label attached to a participants, or indoor/outdoor sports). news object. (Labels are portions of human readable text - unlike most other metadata which are considered to be primarily machine readable Administrative NewsCodes only.) Taxonomies for the administrative properties of Location (Type) Identifiers for of regions of the news items. world where events take place. Audiocodecs Current audio-en/decoders, many Media Type Description the type of media in a of them controlled by international standards. very general way, such as text or photo. Audiocoder software based audio-en/decoders. MIME Type More specific description of the Colorspace Colour space definitions, such as type of media by use of IANA registered MIME RGB, YUV or CMY. types. OfInterestTo Target audience for a NewsItem, Newsitem Type General description of the type based, for example, on demographics, geography of content that a news item carries. or other groupings. (see also “Relevance” below) Notation Technical notation of a piece of Provider A unique ID assigned by the IPTC to a content. company, publication or service provider. Property NewsML specific: The type of a Status NewsML specific: The current usability of NewsML Property element. a NewsItem within NewsML. Relevance The extent in which a news object is Urgency Relative importance of a news object relevant to the target audience specified by for editorial examination. “OfInterestTo” (see above). Videocodec Current video-en/decoders, many Role Role of an individual news object within a of them controlled by international standards. package of several news objects - for example Videocoder Software based video-en/decoders. “Main” (content), “Supporting”, or “Caption”. Topic Type NewsML specific: The kind of thing that the individual thing represented by the topic Transmission NewsCodes can be characterised as. A taxonomy with controlled values for the transmission process. NewsCodes marked in blue have been deprecated and should not be used for new Priority Relative importance of a NewsItem for applications. They are retained so previous distribution. applications will remain valid.
IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006 25 NEWSCODES
NewsCodes had been undertaken term to be deferred for full consid- may be used to provide different during 2005, so recent changes to eration by the Working Party. user views of the codes. this set have mainly consisted of Coverage will probably be ex- additional terms, and some minor Updates tended to areas that have only tidying up. Updated NewsCode sets are is- been partly dealt with so far, with Consideration of the other News- sued when changes and additions updated guidelines being intro- Code Sets resulted in a number of have been formally approved - duced for the introduction of new minor changes and additions, and generally this is after a IPTC Meet- terms and definitions. a decision to deprecate the Nota- ing. Automatic notification of up- It is envisaged that the mainte- tion NewsCodes and the La- dates to the NewsCode sets is nance of the existing Subject belType NewsCodes as they no available as a RSS feed. NewsCodes will continue, to sup- longer appeared to be used. port users. Where appropriate, Two major sets for AudioCodec Subject Newscodes changes and additions proposed NewsCodes and VideoCodec Initial development of the Subject for the new system will be also be NewsCodes were approved with NewsCodes took place over ten incorporated in the Subject News- the older Audiocoder and years ago and it has become ap- Codes. This will not always be pos- Videocoder NewsCodes being parent that the structure which was sible, though, and differences in deprecated. Minor changes were adopted at the time is no longer ap- the structure mean that there will made to a number of the other propriate. In particular, the system be an increasing divergence be- NewsCode sets. has a fixed hierarchy while it is not tween the two versions. Because When a NewsCode set is depre- possible to create relationships be- of this it will be in users’ interests to cated it remains available to en- tween terms. start using the new version. sure that existing users will not be Accordingly a Future News- affected, but is marked with a rec- Codes Working Group has been Taxonomy management ommendation that there should be set up within the NewsCodes Development of the new Subject no further use. Working Party. Although this group NewsCodes involves the inter- has not yet made any formal pro- change of concepts, proposals and Additions posals, preliminary work suggests comments between Working Additions and changes to the that a new data model will be Group members distributed NewsCodes have to be formally needed to take advantages of the around the world. To help with this proposed by IPTC members in line metadata features in the G2-stan- it was decided to investigate the with published Change Manage- dards. advantages of using a formal tax- ment Guidelines, but other organi- onomy management system. sations may submit informal Approach Following presentations at the proposals and seek support from The established seventeen main 2006 Autumn Meeting it was de- IPTC members. Subjects will probably be retained. cided to adopt the SchemaLogic Proposals are then circulated to However, the new structure will taxonomy management system members before consideration by not be hierarchical but will support (www.schemalogic.com). This will the NewsCodes Working Party polyhierarchy so a concept can provide a central location for the when they may be approved, as have multiple parents. Concepts semantic data with direct access submitted, modified or rejected (of- will be differentiated by unique Ids for the delegates involved in the ten when a proposal is turned and definitions, while relationships development process. down the Working Party will sug- gest ways that the proposer could submit a replacement proposal to meet their requirements). NewsCodes and the News Architecture
Fast track An important feature of the new News Architecture is the Since consideration of changes mechanism for handling metadata, and in many cases the has to wait for a formal IPTC meet- metadata fields have to be populated with values from a controlled ing there is also a mechanism for vocabulary. “fast track” approval of third level Providers are free to use their own taxonomies, but IPTC will (Subject Detail) changes to the provide a recommended set of vocabularies for functional Subject NewsCodes. Approval is requirements. The existing NewsCodes will meet some of these given by a standing jury and the re- requirements but a series of additional NewsCode sets will be quirement for this jury has been needed for specific functionality in the G2-standards. These changed so it has to consist of at include concepttype, itemrelation, rendition, titlerole and least four but not more than six whypresent, with the complete set being under development by delegates. the NAR Working Party. As with other proposals “fast Taxonomies used for any given News Item have to be identified track” applications are circulated to by a catalog entry in the Item, and in most applications a set of members for consideration and an appropriate vocabularies will be maintained by the users’ other change to the procedure processing system. The Package Item provides a straightforward makes it possible for members to way of handling providers’ vocabulary sets for delivery to users. ask for consideration of a specific
26 IPTC Spectrum - No 21 - 2006