Another way to state the same thing is that in a DITA map document a topicref to a DITA map must be a child to one of the following:

• map
• topichead
• topicref that points to a topic

The DITA OT cannot disambiguate the your intent whenver a topicref to a DITA map is a child of:

• topicref to a DITA map
• topicgroup

To see why, read on.

I am guessing that you wanted an output structure like the following, where in the output the title for topleveltopicA.dita would be a parent to the title for topleveltopicB.dita:

<map id="mapA">
  <topicref href="topleveltopicA.dita">
    <topicref href="subtopic1A.dita"/>
    <topicref href="subtopic2A.dita"/>
    <topicref href="subtopic3A.dita"/>
    <topicref href="mapB" format="ditamap"/>
  </topicref>
</map>

But the fact that I had to guess is exactly the point that Robert was making. For example, maybe you wanted the title for topleveltopicB.dita to be a sibling of the title for topleveltopicA.dita. There is no clear way for the DITA OT to determine your intent because mapA on its own furnishes no structure to the output; it's only when the DITA OT hits topleveltopicA.dita that a piece of structure can be inferred from mapA.

Regards,

Bob Thomas
President
Tagsmiths, LLC
+1 720 201 8260




--- In dita-users@yahoogroups.com, Robert D Anderson <robander@...> wrote:
>
> When you reference a map with a topicref, the contents of that map
> essentially replace the topicref. There is not really a defined way to push
> additional topics into the structure of the referenced map. In this case,
> how would you expect the contents of mapB to merge with the contents of
> mapA?
>
> Robert D Anderson
> IBM Authoring Tools Development
> Chief Architect, DITA Open Toolkit
> (507) 253-8787, T/L 553-8787 (Good Monday & Thursday)
>
> dita-users@yahoogroups.com wrote on 07/02/2008 11:48:04 AM:
>
> > We are trying to use nested maps to generate HTMLHelp. (OT 1.4.1)
> >
> > The top level map structure and attributes are set as follows:
> > <map>
> > <topicref href="mapA.ditamap" format="ditamap">
> > <topicref href="mapB.ditamap" format="ditamap"></topicref>
> > </topicref>
> > .
> > .
> > .
> > </map>
> >
> > Both mapA and mapB have the following structure and attributes:
> >
> > <map>
> > <topicref href="topleveltopic.dita">
> > <topicref href="subtopic1.dita"></topicref>
> > <topicref href="subtopic2.dita"></topicref>
> > <topicref href="subtopic3.dita"></topicref>
> > .
> > .
> > .
> > </topicref>
> > </map>
> >
> > The HTMLHelp output is missing the topics in mapB. Topics from mapA
> > are included in the output.
> >
> > Thanks for your help,
> > Beth
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
>