Creating a Bookmap in DITA
If you want to create a traditional book in DITA, you can use a bookmap to organize your topics into a
book. A DITA bookmap is a specialized type of map, intended for creating output
that is structured like a book. A bookmap allows you to add book-specific
elements such as <frontmatter>, <part>,
<chapter>, <appendix>, and <backmatter> to
the map. How these book-specific elements are processed for publication is up to the
processing script for each media. See the DITA documentation for details.
You can find additional support for creating books in DITA in the DITA for Publishers plugin, which is included with Oxygen XML Author Eclipse plugin.
To create a book in DITA using a bookmap, follow these steps:
- Create a new bookmap (). If you want the bookmap to be a submap, you can create it the same way by right-clicking the place in the current map where you want to add it (in the DITA Maps Manager) and selecting New from the Append Child, Insert Before, or Insert After submenus.
- Create the structure of your book by adding the appropriate book sections and defining containers for chapters and any appendices. To add sections to a bookmap, or children to a section, right-click the bookmap or section icon and choose any of the reference actions in the Append child menu. The selections offered in the menu will adjust depending on the element they are applied to. Consult the DITA documentation to fully understand the structure of a DITA bookmap and where to create each element.
- Create special elements such as an index and table of contents. The index and table of contents will be generated by the build process, based on the content of the map and the topics it points to.
- Add topics to your chapters to add content to your book. You may find it easier to manage if you use submaps to create the content of your chapters. This keeps your bookmap from becoming long and difficult to manage.