Bookmaps

Information specific to bookmaps in DITA-FMx.

The bookmap element allows you to create a hierarchy of topic references that resembles the structure of a printed book. The general order of elements in a bookmap is similar to that of the map, although the top-level element names will be different. The title of a bookmap can be title or booktitle. The bookmap’s metadata is stored in the bookmeta element (very similar to the topicmeta of the map).

The most significant difference between the map and bookmap are the topic referencing elements. A bookmap provides many specialized topic referencing elements for book-specific purposes that group topicrefs into logical sections.

The first logical grouping is the frontmatter element. The frontmatter element can contain a number of topic referencing elements (including topciref) that specify topics that are part of a book’s frontmatter. A similar backmatter element can be added at the end of the book. One of the special elements in the frontmatter and backmatter is the booklists element.

The booklists element (a child of the frontmatter and backmatter elements) can contain one or more “list” elements that are intended to provide generated lists (similar to the FrameMaker generated list files like a “toc” or “index”). Using DITA-FMx, when you insert an element that is a child of booklists, you are not prompted for a target file name. Instead this element is left empty, and doesn’t reference any file at all. At book-build time, if you have enabled the “Replace List Files with Generated Lists”, those elements will become FrameMaker generated lists (assuming you’ve set up the proper “component templates”).

Following the frontmatter element can be a number of topic grouping elements such as part, chapter, and appendix. The part element can be used to organize chapter and appendix elements into parts, and the chapter and appendix elements are used to organize topciref elements. After the last part, chapter, or appendix can be the backmatter element, similar to the frontmatter element described above.

A bookmap can also make use of relationship tables in the same way they are used in a map. Note that even though your bookmap may make use of part, chapter, and appendix topic referencing elements, the reltable can only contain topciref elements.