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.