DITA maps and their usage
DITA maps serve a variety of roles, both setting up navigation hierarchies and creating relationships between topics and resoruces. These relationships can be both explicit based on relationship tables and attributes within the map, and implicit based on how topic references are nested within the map.
TODO: Current topics with applicable content
TODO: verify that content in the referenced topics below is consistent with or compliments the new topics created for this section.
| Topic | Applicable content |
|---|---|
| Example: DITA map that references a subordinate map | Resolution of a submap. |
| Example: DITA map with a simple relationship table | How links are generated from a relationship table; how processors might represent a relationship table. |
| Example: How the collection-type and linking attributes determine links | Effect of @collection-type and @linking attributes on
generated links. |
| Navigation | Container topic; incorporate into new "DITA maps and their usage" cluster. |
| Table of contents | All content is applicable and needs to be incorporated into the new "DITA maps and their usage" cluster – Closest thing we currently have to a topic about how maps create hierarchies. |
| map | Relationships between topics created by map hierarchy or @collection-type
attribute; role of titles, especially in submaps. |
| topicref | Role of <topicref> nesting in creating containment hierarchies and
parent-child relationships. |
| reltable | Relationship table titles – Processing expectations for relationship tables (not rendered,
used to generate links) – Within a map tree, the effective relationship table is the union of all relationship tables in the map.– How a DITA-aware tool might represent the <reltable> element graphically. |
| relcolspec | How labels for related links from a relationship table are generated. |
| mapref | The hierarchy of the referenced map is merged into the container map at the position of the reference, and the relationship tables of the child map are added to the parent map. |
| topicgroup | How processors handle navigation titles within <topicgroup>
elements. |
| The format attribute | How processors determine the value of the @format attribute when it is not
explicitly set. |
Zoe made the following comment during review A:
"Why are we talking about hierarchical links when discussing rendering expectations for related-links? I'm not sure this is the right location for this information. However, I'm not sure where that information is. I was trying to figure out where it's spelled out how parent/child links are 'expected' to be rendered and I didn't have luck finding it (partially because I went cross-eyed looking at the 104 references to "linking".)"
Can we please add a related link [from the related-links topic] to the related-links section of the spec?