General information on creating maps and bookmaps, and how they work in FrameMaker.
The default Map structure application (DITA-FMx-Map-1.1) allows for creation and editing of both DITA map and bookmap files. When saved to disk, the resulting DITA map file is completely DITA-compliant, although within the FrameMaker authoring environment some additional elements are added to provide a more efficient authoring experience. These elements have an “fm-” prefix.
DITA maps are the fundamental mechanism provided by DITA for organizing topics into deliverables (PDFs, online Help, HTML, etc.). A separate map can be created for each deliverable type or a single map can be used for multiple deliverables. Maps organize the topics into a logical hierarchy using topic referencing elements (topicref for a “map” and chapter, appendix, topicref, and others for a “bookmap”). A topic referencing element can also reference other maps, allowing you to create multiple levels of nested maps as appropriate for your topic organization and workflow.
All DITA map files (both map and bookmap) must use the “.ditamap” file extension. This is a requirement enforced by the DITA Open Toolkit and is also required by DITA-FMx.
On the opening of a DITA map file, all topic referencing elements are updated to include a child fm-reflabel element that displays a label within a locked text range. This label is the target topic’s title (based on the value of the navtitle attribute), filename, or both. If the referenced file is not available, the label “FILE NOT FOUND” is displayed. When you double click the label, the referenced file opens for editing. These labels are formatted with a character style named “DITA-Topicref,” you can change the color and formatting of topic references by modifying the character style definition in the template file.