Map vs bookmap in Webhelp

[InspectorSpacetime]

Hello,

Is there any difference in the WebHelp output if I use a Bookmap or a regular Map?

For example, if I have a Bookmap that's used for PDF output, what happens to the content that's in the front or back matter of the Bookmap?

[marius]

Hi,
The <frontmatter> and <backmatter> are ignored when publishing to WebHelp.
If you want to publish to PDF and also to WebHelp it is better to use the <bookmap> specialization.
For your reference, we are also using <bookmap> for the Oxygen User's Manual to produce both WebHelp-based and PDF output.

[chrispitude]

Hi InspectorSpacetime,

You might find the structure in the following blog post interesting:

Oxygen XML Blog: Cross-Book Links

The top-level WebHelp map is a <map> that instantiates a collection of <bookmap> books.

Using DITA-OT project files, you can then define a single WebHelp deliverable for the top-level OLH map, plus separate PDF deliverables for each book.

For the books, you can use the following plugin, along with @outputclass="topichead" on your <bookmap> map references, to automatically create navigation titles from the book titles in the WebHelp output:

chrispy-snps/DITA-mapref-topichead

[InspectorSpacetime]

Thank you for the answers, very helpful!