Maps let you organize topics that you want to build into an output web or PDF. You can also generate navigation files based on the map structure, and generate links that get added to the topics.

A map file references one or more DITA topic files using <topicref> elements. The <topicref> elements can be nested to reflect the desired hierarchical relationships of the topics. Map files need to have a file extension of .ditamap to be processed properly.

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The basic concepts of DITA are not tied to implementation. Both schemas and DTDs can be used to define specializable DITA elements. The current DITA Open Toolkit provides both DTDs and XML Schemas.

It's important to recognize that DocBook and DITA take fundamentally different approaches.

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The DITA FAQs provide additional information about topic oriented writing. The following sites also provide background on information architecture principles inherent in DITA:

1. Minimalism (John Carroll)
2. DITA: An XML-based Technical Documentation Authoring and Publishing Architecture

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The entire name of the architecture has this combined explanation:

1. Darwin: it uses the principles of specialization and inheritance
2. Information Typing: it capitalizes on the semantics of topics (concept, task, reference) and of content (messages, typed phrases, semantic tables)
3. Architecture: it provides vertical headroom (new applications) and edgewise extension (specialization into new types) for information

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