NITF 3.0 Released

[alank@screamingmedia.com]

The IPTC just announced the official release of NITF 3.0.

  http://www.nitf.org

NITF -- the News Industry Text Format -- is the leading XML format 
for describing the content of news articles. It is maintained by the 
International Press Telecommunications Council, an association of 
publishers that includes AP, Dow Jones, The New York Times, Reuters, 
dpa, AFP, PA, ScreamingMedia, and others.

NITF 3.0 includes several improvements over NITF 2.5 (released 
September, 2000).  Support for "smarter tables" allows publishers of 
tabular data to tightly describe the values displayed in each column. 
Regularly-published tables can also be labelled by publishers so that 
the receivers of their news can improve how they process the data.

The improved metadata support of NITF 3.0 also gives publishers more 
freedom in how they describe what an article covers. Codes applied to 
people, locations, events, and titles can be used to enhance the 
searchability and interlinking of published content.

NITF 3.0 is also a "cleaner" DTD. We've removed many of the confusing 
HTML-esque properties that focused solely on the formatting of 
content. It's well-documented, well-supported, and well-used.

The full press release can be found on the NITF website.

I've been following this newsgroup for a while, and am happy to see 
that the combination of RSS and NITF gets good "airplay." I'd be 
happy to post on the nitf.org website tools, stylesheets, and links 
that might help others understand how the benefits of syndicating 
content via these two standards.

Regards,
Alan.

PS: If we have any publishers of sports data out there, drop me a 
line and I'll fill you in on the IPTC's new SportsML initiative.




Alan Karben
Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, NITF
VP, Product Design, ScreamingMedia, Inc.
alank@screamingmedia.com
+1 (212) 659-1209