The Resolved Document for Styling (RDS) contains the content that is referenced from the map or topic being published. The original markup from maps and topics is assembled, normalized, and augmented in various ways to facilitate publishing and styling.

The content of the RDS is described below. However, the best way to gain an understanding of the format and contents of the RDS is to use the Edit > Edit Resolved Document > For Styling menu item to create an RDS from a DITA map and to examine it in an Arbortext Editor window.

The RDStyle element is the “first tag” element in the RDS. It contains the three major structural elements of the RDS, as described in the following sections.

ResolvedMap is the wrapper element for the assembled content from the DITA maps. The contents of this element are styled to become the majority of the output in the final deliverable.

The content in the ResolvedMap section of the RDS consists of a map element that contains the map title, optionally followed by map metadata, and then the topics referenced from the map. These topics are nested in the RDS as called for by the nesting of the topic references within the map.

ReferredTopics is a wrapper element for topics referred to from other topics, but not referred to from a map. When there are no such topics, this element will be empty. This element is not usually styled. In the default DITA and Techinfo stylesheets that are distributed with Arbortext Editor the content of this element is hidden and so does not appear in any outputs.

The content in the ReferredTopics section of the RDS is similar to that of the ResolvedMap section. It consists of topics but no map, map title, or map metadata elements. The topics are all peers of one another rather than being nested.

This section does not appear in the new format RDS introduced in 6.1 M030.

FlattenedMap is a wrapper for the elements from the original DITA maps. This element and its contents are not used in the final output and are not usually styled.

The content in the FlattenedMap section of the RDS consists of map markup. Topic references that reference DITA maps are removed and replaced by the markup from the referenced map.

The topics that are contained in the ResolvedMap section are either regular DITA topics or “dummy” topics. Dummy topics are created as placeholders in the RDS when a topic reference in a DITA map references one of the following:

The type of a dummy topic is determined by the value of the type attribute on the topic reference in the map. Dummy topics contain a title and possibly metadata taken from the referencing map, but they do not contain additional content other than possibly other nested topics as determined by the nesting of topic references in the map.

When a topic is included in the RDS as the result of a topic reference by a topicref, topichead, or topicgroup element, the topic tag is included in the RDS unchanged. When a topic is included in the RDS as the result of a topic reference speculation such as part, chapter, or appendix, the topic tag in the RDS is changed into a pseudo topic that uses the element name of the specialization as the name for the topic tag. Pseudo topics make it easy to style a part differently from a chapter from an appendix from a concept or other topic. The class attribute for a pseudo topic contains information that allows the pseudo topic to be generalized back to its original base elements if the pseudo element is unstyled.

A pseudo topic may or may not have content when it appears in the RDS. Note that if the pseudo topic has content but the topicref specialization used to name it is declared to have an EMPTY content model, the element name will be placed in the atirds namespace. Examples of such elements include: abbrevlist, amendments, bibliolist, bookabstract, booklist, colophon, dedication, figurelist, indexlist, tablelist, toc, and trademarklist all from the bookmap specialization. When such elements are unstyled, they are generalized as any other unstyled element would be. It may be necessary to add explicit styling for some of the atirds: elements if you don’t want the fallback styling associated with the base element. You may also add your own EMPTY topicref specializations.

A dummy topic that is included in the RDS as a result of a specialized topic reference will be included as a dummy pseudo topic.

During publishing, unstyled topics, dummy topics, pseudo topics, and pseudo dummy topics will all be generalized to a styled base element, if one exists, before Arbortext Styler stylesheet processing occurs.

Only references to pseudo topics appear in the new format RDS introduced in 6.1 M030.

Titles, navigation titles, search titles, short descriptions, and other metadata elements cascade from maps to other maps and to topics in the RDS.

Attribute values cascade from ancestor to descendent elements within documents and from referencing to referenced documents in the RDS. Default attribute values are made explicit in the RDS by using either default values from the DTD or schema or processor-supplied default values as called for in the DITA specification. In some cases cascading attributes values replace or override values in topics, but where multiple values are allowed, the values are combined.

See the OASIS DITA Specification for details about default values, cascading values, processor supplied default values, and which values override or are combined.

Five categories of attribute appear in the RDS: