map

The <map> element is used to define a map which describes the relationships among a set of resources, such as DITA topics. Maps consist of references to topics and other resources organized into hierarchies, groups, and tables. Maps provide a way to express these relationships in a single common format that can be used for different outputs.

The containing element for a map is the <map> element, which can take title and id attributes. Within the map, use the <topicref> element to add and organize references to the topics, and the <topicgroup> and <reltable> elements to provide non-hierarchical relationships. You can use the <map> element to set default attribute values for all <topicref> elements in the map.

The title element may optionally be used to provide a title for the map. The title element is allowed beginning with DITA 1.1, and is preferred over the title attribute. In some scenarios the title is purely informational, and is present as an aid to the author. In other scenarios it may be useful or even required. For example, if a map is converted to Eclipse Help, the Eclipse system will require a title for the resulting table of contents. In the bookmap specialization of map, the title element provides a title for the book represented by that map.

Example

In this example, there are six topicrefs. They are nested and have a hierarchical relationship. The file bats.dita is the parent topic and the other topics are its children. The hierarchy could be used to generate a PDF, a navigation pane in an information center, a summary of the topics, or related links between the parent topic and its children.

<map id="mybats">
 <title>Bats</title>
 <topicref href="bats.dita" type="topic">
  <topicref href="batcaring.dita" type="task"></topicref>
  <topicref href="batfeeding.dita" type="task"></topicref>
  <topicref href="batsonar.dita" type="concept"></topicref>
  <topicref href="batguano.dita" type="reference"></topicref>
  <topicref href="bathistory.dita" type="reference"></topicref>
 </topicref>
</map>

Contains

Doctype	Content model
map	( ( title) (optional) then ( topicmeta) (optional) then ( navref or anchor or topicref or topichead or topicgroup or reltable or data or data-about) (any number) )
bookmap	( ( title) (optional) then ( topicmeta) (optional) then ( navref or anchor or topicref or topichead or topicgroup or reltable or data or data-about) (any number) )

Contained by

Doctype	Parents

Inheritance:

- map/map

Attributes

Name	Description	Data Type	Default Value	Required?
title	An identifying title for the map. May be used or ignored, depending on the capabilities of the display mechanism. Note that in DITA 1.1, the map can include a title element, which is preferred over the title attribute.	CDATA	#IMPLIED	No
id	This attribute may be used for debugging purposes, for example to identify which map a link was generated from.	ID	#IMPLIED	No
conref	This attribute is used to reference an ID on a map that can be reused. See The conref attribute for examples and details about the syntax.	CDATA	#IMPLIED	No
anchorref	Identifies a location within another map file where this map will be anchored (added at runtime, using Eclipse navigation integration). For example, `anchorref="map1.ditamap/a1"` causes this map to be pulled into the location of the anchor point a1 in the other map1.ditamap.	CDATA	#IMPLIED	No
xmlns:ditaarch	Declares the default DITA namespace.	CDATA	#FIXED http://dita.oasis-open.org/architecture/2005/
DITAArchVersion	Designates the version of the architecture that is in use.	CDATA	"1.1" (version dependent; will increase)	No
domains	Indicates the specialized domains that are included in the DTD or Schema.	CDATA	(map mapgroup-d) (topic indexing-d)	No
%topicref-atts; (collection-type, type, scope, locktitle, format, linking, toc, print, search, chunk)	A set of related attributes. See %topicref-atts; and %topicref-atts-no-toc;.	parameter entity	PE not applicable	Not applicable
%select-atts; (props, base, platform, product, audience, otherprops, importance, rev, status)	A set of related attributes, described at %select-atts;	parameter entity	PE not applicable	Not applicable
%localization-atts; (translate, xml:lang, dir)	A set of related attributes, described at %localization-atts;.	parameter entity	PE not applicable	Not applicable
%global-atts; (xtrf, xtrc)	A set of related attributes, described at %global-atts;	parameter entity	PE not applicable	Not applicable
class, outputclass	Common attributes described in Other common DITA attributes.