NITF News Industry Text Format

A Solution for Sharing News

Developed by News Publishers, for News Publishers

NITF uses the eXtensible Markup Language to define the content and structure of news articles. Because metadata is applied throughout the news content, NITF documents are far more searchable and useful than HTML pages.

By using NITF, publishers can adapt the look, feel, and interactivity of their documents to the bandwidth, devices, and personalized needs of their subscribers. These documents can be translated into HTML, WML (for wireless devices), RTF (for printing), or any other format the publisher wishes.

NITF was developed by IPTC. It is a standard that is open, public, proven, well-used, well-documented, and well-supported.

NITF is an XML standard designed to structure independent news articles. NewsML-G2, also an IPTC standard, is for the structuring of multimedia news packages. On one hand there is no concept in NewsML-G2 of a paragraph or subheadline on the other hand there is no concept in NITF of a sidebar or alternative translations of the same document – therefore they complement each other perfectly. Find more about using NITF with NewsML-G2 in the “G2 Guidelines for Implementers“

Specification

The most recent version of NITF is 3.6, which was released in January 2012.

• NITF 3.6 XSD Schema, with documentation embedded
• Schema RUBY inclusion
• NITF 3.6 Download Package with all Schemas, DTDs, documentation, and sample documents.
• NITF 2.5…3.6 Download Package with all Schemas, DTDs, documentation, and sample documents.

Documentation

• NITF 3.6 documentation
• NITF 3.5 DTD Dynamic Documentation
• NITF 3.5 DTD Standard Documentation
• NITF / NewsML 1.x Cooperation.
  Learn how NITF can be complemented by using the IPTC’s NewsML 1.x standard.
• Guide to implementing NITF within NewsML-G2
• An introduction to “Semantic markup” using NITF – dating back to the time when NITF was created, but still showing the right direction.

Support

The NITF Users Discussion group is used to share experiences, raise questions and recommend and discuss changes to the NITF standard. It also connects companies and organisations who use NITF and vendors who create tools that process NITF documents.