Brendan Quinn has released a Perl module for processing NewsML, and T.J. Mather has released a Perl implementation of Canonical XML; both modules are available on CPAN.

Quinn's Syndication::NewsML is an object oriented interface to the IPTC's NewsML standard. A work in progress, the current version of the module is 0.04. Quinn writes that he is releasing it progressively as he writes new features and fixes bugs. In his announcement, he explains how NewsML differs from the simpler web syndication standard RSS:

NewsML differs from simpler standards such as RSS in that RSS sends links to stories, where NewsML can be used to send links or the story itself, plus any associated information such as images, video or audio files, PDF documents, or any other type of data.

NewsML also offers much more metadata information than RSS, including links between associated content; the ability to revoke, update or modify previously sent stories; support for sending the same story in multiple languages and/or formats; and a method for user-defined metadata known as Topic Sets.

T. J. Mather has released a first version of XML::Canonical to CPAN. It implements most of the W3C's Canonical XML Recommendation. Mather's module requires a patched version of XML::LibXML, which will likely show up in CPAN soon, but is available in the mean time from Mather's web site.