Child DITA map vs. Map group elements (topicset and topicgro

[anachimu]

Our Help documentation contains 450+ topics. Our current Help system has Master DITA map with child ditamaps. Each child .ditamap has a child .ditamap of its own and topics or just topics and subtopics. We are planning on adding new topics and customizing help based on user role. We will be having 5-6 versions of Help.

Should I use child ditamaps or topicsets or topicgroups or a combination of map and group elements within the Master DITA map to group topics? When and why should a child map, a topicset and a topicgroup be used?

Are there any limitations regarding number of topics or child ditamaps etc. Could there be any issues when exporting the master DITA map when using child ditamap vs. other group elements? Is topic file path length an issue when applying transformation and creating output?

Once the 5-6 Help master DITA maps have been created, we do not anticipate major changes to the Help layout for at least next 3-4 years.

Thank You

[Radu]

Hi Angelina,

The Oxygen forum is a more static place where to ask a question of general interested unrelated to the application, regular Oxygen users registered on the forum do not receive notifications when a new topic is added on the forum.
You should consider registering and asking the question on the DITA Users List as it has a large number of users, most of which being technical writers.

For our Oxygen's user manual which is also written in DITA we use the multiple DITA Maps approach.
Indeed you can also use <topicset> and <topicsetref> to group a set of topic refs and then to reference to them.
The <topicgroup> is an element which can group a number of topicrefs and apply a set of common attributes to all:

http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.2/os ... group.html

Regards,
Radu