Jen Linton, Comtech Services Inc,
"Developing DITA Maps"

DITA Maps consist of topics organized into hierarchies and tables to build references. Maps control the hierarchy and the relationships between the topics created and form them into an organized rendition for people to easily navigate and read. You can define the navigation for any set of topics. Because your DITA map isn't tied to the structure you author the topics in, you can:

• Place topics in more than one position in a map. For example, a task can occur in more than one place in a task flow.
• Create feature-oriented maps that answer the question "what does this product do?". You can also create task-oriented maps to answer the question "how do I accomplish my goals?"
• Create maps to deliver information to specific audiences
• Create hierarchies depending on your output format for online or print.
• Include topics in your navigation from different information sets, such as external web sites and other content you or another department may have already created.
• Create a Table of Contents (TOC) and create links between topics in online output (the relationships between topics defined in a map can be used to create these).