To answer Bob’s question, about the relation between the rNews and NewsML...
First a little background:
NewsML is an “envelope” standard. That is to say, NewsML provides a mechanism for expressing metadata about a “news item”, where a news item can be anything from a photograph to a video recording to a written news article. The representation of the news item itself, however, is not specified in NewsML. When using NewsML to transport written articles, many providers represent articles using the News Industry Text Format (NITF), another IPTC standard developed specifically for representing written news articles.
Second: the answer to Bob’s question.
The rNews proposal draws from the vocabularies of both NewsML and NITF, preferring the NewsML terminology where the standards overlap. And although these two standards provide vocabulary terms for the majority of concepts in the rNews proposal, there are some items (e.g. comments) for which neither standard addresses. For these it may be necessary to either (1) define terms specific to rNews or (2) draw from other existing vocabularies.
Hope this helps!
Evan
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Evan Sandhaus
Lead Architect, Semantic Platforms
The New York Times Company
@kansandhaus