ATHENS, 19 March 2004 -- Progress
on an updated version of the world's most popular multimedia
news packaging standard, NewsML, continued as delegates
to the International Press Telecommunication Council
worked toward a goal of a 2005 launch. The IPTC's latest
work takes the combined efforts of more than 30 of the
world's major news agencies and news system vendors,
and it represents a major step toward simplifying the
exchange and dissemination of news packages that can
include text, photos, graphics, sound and video.
Building on work begun at their meeting in Leipzig,
Germany, in late 2003, IPTC members reviewed potentially
thorny issues that included compatibility with NewsML
version 1 and assisting non-members in their efforts
to use NewsML. Known as NewsML Version 2, the new electronic
multimedia envelope will take advantage of the latest
advances in XML. As the lingua franca of the Internet,
XML supports hundreds of languages and software products,
and is widely used by government and business to exchange
complex data. The IPTC was one of the earliest adopters
of XML.
In addition, IPTC members saw a presentation by Adobe
explaining its XMP markup language, and how coding that
supports IPTC's XML-based standards for photographers
can be including in a future release of Adobe Photoshop
CS. For many years, thousands of photographers around
the globe have been using the "IPTC header" to
archive crucial data about photographs, including caption
and location information. Adobe's new CS series of software
will allow the IPTC header to be greatly expanded to
include much richer detail and more standardized information
about the content of images. This will greatly simplify
the archiving and retrieval of images, even for organizations
that are outside the news industry.
Members also heard of plans to package IPTC's controlled
vocabularies -- essentially standardized lists of terms
for indexing and editing news -- and use the same bundle
in all of IPTC's XML products. The bundle and its accompanying
documentation will better allow non-news users of IPTC's
controlled vocabularies to understand and use IPTC's
indexing products. Since all IPTC products are available
free and without royalties, smaller industries will have
an opportunity to use IPTC's advanced indexing techniques
at a fraction of the cost of developing their own.
The IPTC's next event will be its annual general meeting,
to be held in Hong Kong in May 2004.
|
