PHILADELPHIA, USA, 8 December, 2003 -- XML-based formats for sharing news are rapidly gaining acceptance and may soon revolutionize the way news is shared between agencies and is presented to the public, a software developer's group was told today. But traditional newspaper publishers are still moving cautiously.

"Customers prefer extremely simple solutions," said Geoff Haynes, manager of product development for The Associated Press.

More than 100 news organizations, news system vendors and XML developers gathered here for The News Standards Summit, an all-day session where progress reports were delivered by developers and users who share XML as their lingua franca. As a major force in news standards for nearly 40 years, IPTC presented its latest versions of NewsML, NITF and SportsML -- standards that are already in use by major news agencies around the world.

"The wide interest and participation in the News Summit proves that there is an industry-wide need to develop the business cases for the required for management support and implement the existing standards for news," said John Iobst, chairman of the IPTC.

With several text-based systems for tagging news content and important data about the news, IPTC is provides a framework for moving news stories from creation through editing and onward to publishing.

For magazines and web discussion "blogs", several XML standards group presented plans for publishing and syndication. The IPTC described its own plans -- called IPTC Roadmap 2005 -- to update NewsML and revamp the method for proposing, designing and maintaining its XML standards.

"The IPTC Roadmap 2005 has as its primary goals to make standards easier to implement and to improve documentation and education on standards. This is driven by requirements from our users, and shows that IPTC is already aligning with wide user demand," said Michael Steidl, IPTC's Managing director. "This makes us work harder on these aims."

The News Standards Summit was held in partnership with the XML 2003 Conference of IDEAlliance and OASIS. The IPTC's next regular meeting will be in Athens in March 2004.