A map is an aggregation of the topics in a DITA document, with the topics arranged as a list or a hierarchy.
DITA documents can have multiple maps or sets of maps for a given document. For example, a software product available for both Windows and Linux might have two maps, each specifying the topics to include in that document version. As another example, a large, complex document might have a master map that included multiple submaps, specifying the topics to include in various "chapters" and "sections."
Example
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <!-- (c) Copyright 2006-2007 by VR Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. --> <!DOCTYPE map PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Map//EN" "../dtd/map.dtd"> <!-- This file is part of the DITA Open Toolkit project hosted on Sourceforge.net. See the accompanying license.txt file for applicable licenses. --> <map id="customizing_map" title="Customizing your published output"> <topicref href="customizing.dita"> <topicref href="condproc.dita"> <topicref href="aboutcondproc.dita"/> <topicref href="condproc_using.dita"/> <topicref href="addmeta.dita"/> <topicref href="filtcontent.dita"/> <topicref href="flagcontent.dita"/> <topicref href="showrev.dita"/> </topicref> <topicref href="css.dita"/> <topicref href="xslt_processing.dita"/> <topicref href="xhtml.dita"> <topicref href="xhtml_overview.dita"/> <topicref href="xhtml_headerfooter.dita"/> <topicref href="xhtml_frameset.dita"/> </topicref> <topicref href="pdf_cover.dita"/> <topicref href="customizing_ditablogs.dita"/> <topicref href="customizing_formoreinfo.dita"/> </topicref> </map>