Create a relationship table

1)In the Structure View of a DITA map, place the insert point at end of the topic and at the same level as the topicref elements.

2)To display the Smart Catalog, press Ctrl + 1 and choose reltable.

The Insert Table dialog is displayed.

3)Specify the number of columns and rows.

The number of columns depends on the number of related topics that you plan to group together.

The number of rows depends on the number of groups of related topics that you plan to create.

note:  You can also choose to create multiple relationship tables for multiple groups of related topics.

4)Click Insert.

A relationship table is added to the DITA map.

5)To display the relationship table in a tabular view, go to the Document view.

While you can add topics to a relationship table from the Structure view, the tabular view provides a more convenient mode to work with.

Default relationship table (with 4 columns and 1 body row)

In each cell of the relationship table header, you specify the DITA topic type of the related topics that you plan to include in body cells of the column.

FrameMaker allows you to add the following DITA topic types to a relationship table:

•Topic

•Task

•Concept

•Reference

note:  By default, FrameMaker supports the Topic type. So if you plan to only include topic types in the table, you do not need to set the type attribute.

6)To add a specific DITA topic type to a column in the table:

a)Place the insertion pointer in the table header cell.

b)Open the Attribute dialog (Element > Edit Attributes).

c)Set the type attribute to the DITA topic type:

Topic type - attribute value: topic

Task type - attribute value: task

Concept type - attribute value: concept

Reference type - attribute value: reference

important:  The attribute values are case-sensitive.

If you set type attribute as described above, the column title is updated:

Updated type attributes

7)In each cell of a row in the relationship table, you add a topic reference of the related topics. This implies that, one set of related topics need to be included in the cells of one row of the table.

To add topic references of related topics in the table body cells:

a)Place the insertion point in the a cell of a row, in the Elements catalog (Element > Element Catalog), double-click the topicref element to add it to the cell.

The Insert Element dialog is displayed.

You can also use the Smart Catalog to insert the topicref element.

Press Ctrl+1 to display the Smart Catalog. Select and add the topicref element.

b)In the HRef field, enter the path to a topic file and click OK.

Alternatively, use the Browse button to navigate to and select the topic.

The topic reference is added to the table row.

tip:  If you are unable to add a topic reference to a table cell, check the topic type specified in the column header.

c)Add one topic reference (to a related topic) to each cell of the table row.

If the table included multiple rows, you can add multiple groups of related topics (references) to each row.

Sample relationship table workflow

To test the output after Create a relationship table in a DITA map, you can use the Save As PDF option in FrameMaker.

1)Ensure that the DITA map is selected.

2)From the File menu, choose Save As PDF.

3)In the PDF Setup dialog, click Set.

The PDF output of the DITA map displays the Related Links sections for the topics that you include in the cells of the relationship tables in the DITA map.

important:  The PDF Save As functionality is used in this section as an example. You can also publish the DITA map to the output formats available in FrameMaker’s Multi-Channel publishing feature.

The topics display in the same order as which you specify them in the cells of the table row.

Also, related topics that display do not include the current topic. In the sample relationship table described below:

Relationship table in Document view

The Save As topic Related Links section displays:

•Save As PDF

•Save As Review PDF

•Save As XML

It does not display the Save As (current) topic.