Bookmap

The bookmap specialization of DITA's standard DITA map allows you to organize your DITA topics into a collection that can be printed as a book or other paged layout.

Why use a bookmap?

The OASIS bookmap application of DITA allows you to produce your DITA topics and even whole DITA maps as the content of a formally defined book. This allows you to produce not only maps for online deliverables, but also PDFs with the same content, replete with covers, formal notices and frontmatter, and so forth.

What is a bookmap?

A bookmap is a special kind of DITA map that defines the major structures and setup information for producing maps of information as a book.

A typical DITA map might have a title and then a set of topicrefs, in a sequence, in a hierarchy, or both, that define the structure by which topics are to be viewed as a complete information deliverable. A DITA map does not have structures to specifically designate how topics are to be treated as chapters, preface content, or even for constructing a cover or special content (such as edition notice boilerplate). To enable DITA content to be viewed in a more booklike manner, you need a context that represents all the special processing that might be invested on producing a map or set of maps as a book. That is the role of DITA's bookmap specialization.

A bookmap has the following specialized major structures:


What is bookmeta?

Bookmeta is a specialization of the topicmeta element in a DITA map. It has specialized content for holding information about a particular book represented by the bookmap.

What are booklists?

A booklist is a specialized topicref that indicates a collection of information from the content of a book. Sets of <booklist> elements (or elements derived from booklist) are contained in the <booklists> element.

A common kind of booklist is the Table of Contents. If you wish, you can define a completely new collection such as a Table of Footnotes and provide either a pre-populated topic with that content, or provide processing that will collect and insert that topical content during the book processing.

Specific booklist elements are provided in the OASIS bookmap for:


  • toc--the usual Table of Contents (commonly located in the frontmatter booklists)
  • figurelist--a list of figures
  • tablelist--a list of tables
  • abbrevlist--a list of abbreviations
  • trademarklist--a list of trademarks
  • bibliolist--a list of bibliographic references
  • glossarylist--a list of glossary terms and definitions
  • indexlist--an index (commonly located in the backmatter booklists)
  • booklist--reference any other topic that contains booklist-like material, or specialize the element to represent a collection that will be gathered by new override processing.

What is in frontmatter?

Front matter of a book typically contains prefaces, instructions, or other introductory material prior to the actual content of a book.

Specific frontmatter elements include any number of:


  • booklists--collections of book parts, like ToC
  • notices--edition notices, safety notices, terms and conditions, and so forth
  • dedication--to my forebearing significant other...
  • colophon--how the book was produced
  • bookabstract--handy for search tools and registry into tracking/workflow systems
  • draftintro--special content for reviewers
  • preface--an introduction or introductory statement
  • topicref--extensible placeholder for any topic
  • topichead--as in a DITA map, this element allows grouping with a navigation title
  • topicgroup--as in DITA map, this element allows grouping without a navigation title.

What is in backmatter?

Back matter of a book typically contains closing information that follows the main content of a book.

Specific backmatter elements include any number of:


  • booklists--collections of book parts, like the index
  • notices--edition notices, safety notices, terms and conditions, and so forth
  • dedication--to my first grade teacher...
  • colophon--how the book was produced
  • amendments--points to a list of amendments or updates to the book
  • topicref--extensible placeholder for any topic
  • topichead--as in a DITA map, this element allows grouping with a title
  • topicgroup--as in DITA map, this element allows grouping without a title.

How is a bookmap authored and produced?

As a specialization of DITA map, the DITA bookmap will be supported by default like a typical DITA map in DITA-aware editors and processing tools.

With appropriate style and functional overrides, XML editors can display a DITA bookmap just as they would the XML structure for other book-supporting DTDs, and specialized DITA processing or DITA bookmaps will exploit the book metadata and book features in high quality paged output.

For example, you might have a DITA map that represents the hierarchy you intend for a particular Web deliverable of your DITA topics. Now you wish to also produce that map as a formal book to be packaged along with your boxed product. You can open a new bookmap instance and define a title for the book, indicate any required publisher information in the bookmeta area, link in a preface, indicate whether you want a table of figures along with the table of contents, and finally create a chapter element that references your existing DITA map. You have created a complete book deliverable, at least in a simplistic manner. The design of bookmap allows you to refine your deliverable and even make the book version of the map have content that is specific to the book version, versus the Web version.

Example

<bookmap id="taskbook">
  <booktitle>
    <mainbooktitle>Product tasks</mainbooktitle>
    <booktitlealt>Tasks and what they do</booktitlealt>
  </booktitle>
  <bookmeta>
    <author>John Doe</author>
    <bookrights>
      <copyrfirst>
        <year>2006</year>
      </copyrfirst>
      <bookowner>
        <person href="janedoe.xml">Jane Doe</person>
      </bookowner>
    </bookrights>
  </bookmeta>
  <frontmatter>
    <preface/>
  </frontmatter>
  <chapter format="ditamap" href="installing.ditamap"/>
  <chapter href="configuring.xml"/>
  <chapter href="maintaining.xml">
    <topicref href="maintainstorage.xml"/>
    <topicref href="maintainserver.xml"/>
    <topicref href="maintaindatabase.xml"/>
  </chapter>
  <appendix href="task_appendix.xml"/>
</bookmap>

Modules

DTD:

bookmap.dtd
bookmap.mod

Schema:

bookmap.xsd
bookmapGrp.xsd
bookmapMod.xsd

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OASIS DITA Architectural Specification v1.1 -- Committee Draft 13 February 2007
Copyright © OASIS Open 2005, 2007. All Rights Reserved.