NITF Working Group October 2007

NITF Maintenance www.NITF.org

“All news is an exaggeration of life.”- Daniel Schorr, CBS News

Stuart Myles Alan KarbenDow Jones XML Team Solutions

Prague / October 17, 2007

© IPTC – www.iptc.org 2

Agenda

• Approval of minutes from previous meeting• Matters Arising• Chairman’s Report• State of NITF Today• NITF 4.0• Future of NITF• Other business• The next meeting


NITF Minutes

• Approval of Minutes from previous meeting: Tokyo 30th May 2007

NM0704.1


NITF Matters

• Matters arising?- I took over!- Děkuji to Alan Karben.


State of NITF Today

• News Industry Text Format

• “A solution for sharing news”

• Developed by News Publishers, for News Publishers

• Defines the content and structure of news articles

• NITF v3.4 in DTD and XML Schema

• http://www.nitf.org


State of NITF Today

• IPTC’s most widely-used XML standard– 455 members on the Y! list– Since June, 9 subscribed, 4 unsubs

• Recent history– NITF largely the same since 90’s– Consolidation: removed HTML formats,

streamlined enriched text, etc.– XML schema

• Stability


State of NITF Today

• Some activity– Only 27 Y! messages since June– No one responded to NITF profiles or

contributed to the G2 map

• Emerging Alternatives– XHTML, Microformats, RDFa, PRISM, etc.

• NITF is strong, but with looming challenges


NITF 4.0

• NITF Profiles: Core– Inline and structural markup

– No metadata that conflicts with G2– Slimmed-down set of NITF elements– http://tinyurl.com/ywzawr

• NITF Profiles: Power– Map Power metadata to G2 metadata– http://tinyurl.com/2rgfx6


NITF 4.0: Core, Power, G2

G2

PowerCore

Metadata not in NITF

G2 expansion of NITF possible

Map to G2

No map to G2


Containers:• paragraph• sub-headline• table• media• list• sidebar• preformatted block• editorial note

Closers:• credit-line• biographical blurb

Many Containers hold Enriched Text:– phrases (people, titles, etc)– highlights (stylistic emphasis)– link– break

Core Conceptual Modelarticle

abstract

headlinesuper-headline

sub-headline

main-headline

byline

Containers

Closer

G2

main-headline

byline

phrases

link


NITF Power Modelnitf

head

title

body

Most NITF <head> elements and attributes map to G2 (or make no sense)

Notable exceptions are<iim><pubdata> and<revision-history>

Map details athttp://tinyurl.com/2rgfx6

meta

tobject

iim

docdata

pubdata

revision-history

iim

pubdata

revision-history


NITF G2: Embedded Media

• NITF articles often embed a media item, e.g. image, audio, video, etc

• The media item often has associated metadata, e.g. copyright, mime-type, height, width, etc.

• When switching to NITF+G2, what do you do with the media item and its metadata?

media

body.content

nitf

media-metadata

media-reference

media-caption



It depends.



• Three options:– Create an item for the media object and

use packageItem to glue the NITF article and media object together

– Use links in the item header to reference media objects needed for the item to display correctly

– Embed the media object in the NITF article



Create an item for the media object and use packageItem to glue the NITF article and media object together

newsMessage

itemSet

packageItem

newsItem

newsItem

nitf

media



Use a link in the item header to reference the media object

(e.g. a graphic / audio / video on the web).

newsMessage

newsItem

nitf

media

link



– Embed the media object in the NITF article

– Provide context– Exact placement– Specific order– Captions often

specific to the article

media

body.content

nitf

media-reference

newsItem

media-caption

link


NITF G2

• The choices with embedded media illustrate a general conclusion

• When using NITF within NewsML-G2 there will be a number of choices that news publishers need to make

• How much to embrace the “G2 Way”?


NITF G2: qcodes

• The NAR makes extensive use of qcodes

• Should NITF adopt qcodes too?

• qcodes are “qualified codes”

• Scheme identifier followed by a colon followed by a code (which can contain a colon), e.g.

qcode=“org:DJ”

qcode=“poi:cz:praha”


NITF G2: qcodesIn NAR’s PCL text markup:

<headline>The

<inline qcode=“org:DJ”>

Dow Jones</inline> representative visited <inline qcode=“poi:cz:praha”>

Prague

</inline>

</headline>

In NITF

<hl>The

<org idsrc=“org” value=“DJ”>

Dow Jones</org> representative visited <city code-src=“poi” city-code=“cz:praha”>

Prague

</city>

</hl>


NITF G2: qcodes

• NAR provides powerful metadata capabilities using qcodes– Hooks into conceptItem (path to ontology)– Ambiguous assertions of identity

• Nothing to stop providers using qcode-like values for existing NITF attributes<org value=“org:DJ”>

• Or could add non backward compatible qcode attribute to relevant elements<city qcode=“poi:cz:praha”>


NITF G2: qcodes

• Proposal: Do not add qcodes to NITF.Instead, use NAR’s inlineRef and NITF’s id.

• NAR’s <inlineRef> mechanism allows qcodes to be applied to any element that sports an XML id attribute

• All NITF elements support id• Including the useful “catchall” <classifier>


NITF G2: qcodes example

<newsItem><inlineRef idrefs=“e1” qcode=“e:happy” confidence=“77”>

<name>Happiness</><description>Mirth.</><inlineRef idrefs=“p7” qcode=“p:buddha”><name>Gautama Buddha</></inlineRef>…<nitf><person id=“p7”>Buddha</> discussed the role of the mind in the pursuit of <classifier id=“e1”>happiness</> through the practice of the eightfold path…

</nitf></newsItem>


NITF 4.0: Next Steps

1. Re-solicit comments on Yahoo groups

2. Resolve and harmonize discussion points

3. Draft an NITF-in-G2 User Guide

4. Vote on NITF 4.0 Proposal in Beijing


NITF Future

• Stability– Few changes recently– Not even to integrate with NewsML-G2

• Requests– Inline markup– More complex and richer– Inspired by microformats, XHTML


NITF Future: Drive Adoption

• Text article model is close to universal

• And yet it is being re-invented:– PRISM, microformats,

RDFa, XHTML, etc.

• This hurts interoperability and therefore competition and costs

article

abstract

headlinesuper-headline

sub-headline

main-headline

byline

Containers

Closer



• What is the best way to drive adoption?• We could promote the NITF format

– Evangelize the NITF tags amongst publishers of other kinds

– Adopt more and more of the complex markup of XHTML

• We could promote the common article model– Map from the model to XHTML, RDFA, etc.– De-emphasize the NITF tags themselves



• In my view, the best way to drive adoption is to do a combination of the two

• We should create an explicit article model (similar to the NAR)

• We would then create maps from the article model to various formats

• The IPTC would declare support for NITF as “first among equals”


NITF

• Any other business?

• Date and place of next meeting:– Beijing, China Spring 2008

Děkuji!

Business

NITF Working Group October 2007