Create a relationship table

Create a relationship table

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

2. To display the Smart Catalog, press ctrl+1 and select 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.

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

   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.

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.

Figure 1. 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

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.

Adding a specific DITA topic type to a relationship table column

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

1. Place the insertion pointer in the table header cell.

2. Open the Attributes dialog (Element > Edit Attributes).

3. 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

   CAUTION:
   The attribute values are case sensitive.

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

Figure 2. Updated type attributes

Adding a related topic to a relationship table cell

In each cell of a row in the relationship table, you add a topic reference to 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:

1. Place the insertion point in 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

Adding related topics to a relationship table row

To specify that two or more topics in a DITA map are related, you need to add these to a single row in a relationship table. For the steps to create a relationship table, see Create a relationship table.

For example, to specify that the topics Save As, Save As PDF, Save As Review PDF, and Save As XML are related topics:

Figure 3. Relationship table in Document view

You can add any number of rows to a relationship table. FrameMaker treats all topics in a row as related.

You can add any number of relationship tables to a DITA map. You might do this to group together sets of related topics.

Specifying the order of related topics in a relationship table row

The order of the related topics in a table row defines the sequence in which the topics display in the Related Links section of the DITA map output.

In the following example, the Related Links section of the Save As PDF topic will display as:

• Save As

• Save As Review PDF

• Save As XML

Figure 4. Relationship table in Document view

This implies that if you change the order of the topics in the table, the sequence in the Related Links section will display differently.