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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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:
Back matter of a book typically contains closing information that follows the main content of a book.
Specific backmatter elements include any number of:
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.
<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>
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OASIS DITA Version 1.1 Architectural Specification -- Committee Specification, 31 May 2007
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