Create relationships between topics

The DITA map offers the possibility of grouping different types of links between topics in a relationship table instead of specifying the links of each topic in that topic.

  1. Open the DITA map file where you want to create the relationship table. Use the action Open that is available on the toolbar of the DITA Maps Manager view.

  2. Place the cursor at the location of the relationship table.

  3. Run the action Insert a DITA reltable that is available on the Author toolbar, on the menu DITATable and on the Table submenu of the contextual menu of the DITA map editor.

  4. In the Insert Relationship Table dialog that is displayed by this action you set some parameters of the relationship table that will be created: the number of rows, the number of columns, a table title (optional), a table header (optional).

  5. After setting the table parameters press OK in the Insert Table dialog for inserting a table in the edited DITA map.

  6. Set the type of the topics in the header of each column. The header of the table (the relheader element) already contains a relcolspec element for each table column. You should set the value of the attribute type of each relcolspec element to a value like concept, task, reference. When you click in the header cell of a column (that is a relcolspec element) you can see all the attributes of that relcolspec element including the type attribute in the Attributes view. You can edit the attribute type in this view.

  7. To insert a topic reference in a table cell just place the cursor in that cell and run the action Insert Topic Reference that is available on the Author toolbar, on the menu DITAInsert and on the Insert submenu of the contextual menu.

  8. Optionally for adding a new row to the table/removing an existing row you should run the action Insert Row/ Delete Row that is available on the Author toolbar, on the menu DITATable and on the Table submenu of the contextual menu.

  9. Optionally for adding a new column to the table/removing an existing column you should run the action Insert Column/ Delete Column that is available on the Author toolbar, on the menu DITATable and on the Table submenu of the contextual menu.