Support for topic-to-topic linking
I produce a Reverb website wherein I document numerous products. Ideally, each product would be its own ditamap with topic-to-topic links that resolve per the DITA spec. At this time, I must have one very large ditamap where I use <topichead> to create the structure that I would like to do with ePublisher's Merge Settings.
Summary
ePublisher 2012.3 does not support topic-to-topic links if the target is not in the source's ditamap even if you follow the DITA specification.
From the DITA spec on this page http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.2/os/spec/archSpec/ditalinking.html#ditalinking it says: “For the purposes of determining the set of dependencies for a given map tree, processors may ignore any implicit dependencies created by links within topics that are not also established by explicit dependencies in the map tree. In the case where a map includes a topic that includes a topic-to-topic link, where the linked topic is not explicitly included in the map, and the processor considers only dependencies that are explicitly defined in the map, the processor may fail to resolve the topic-to-topic link. This case can be avoided by using a resource-only topic reference in the map tree to establish the dependency explicitly. If the resource-only topicref also defines a key, the link within the topic can then be changed to use a key reference (@keyref or @conkeyref) instead of a URI reference (@href, @conref). See Key-based addressing.”
Detailed Description
This is exactly my situation. I have a topic-to-topic link where the target is not in the ditamap. I have added the target file as “resource-only” and I am still not getting a link. The xrefs are being dropped.
Use Cases
The use case is twofold:
1. ePublisher would honor the DITA 1.2 specification.
2. I could use have many smaller ditamaps and use ePublisher's Merge Settings to provide additional structure. This would simplify my maps and allow me to selectively update only portions of a larger set rather then the entire set.
3. I was be able to use group-based PDFs in my Reverb project. I have had to remove them until this issue gets resolved.
Update 3/25/2013
Added a project file with DITA source. DitaLinking.zip