Omni Systems, Inc. Mif2Go User's Guide, Version 55

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> 15 Converting to DITA XML > 15.8 Organizing DITA topics > 15.8.1 Understanding when to split, nest, or wrap DITA topics

### 15.8.1 Understanding when to split, nest, or wrap DITA topics

Normally Mif2Go splits each FrameMaker file into individual DITA XML output topic files. Although you can choose to generate a single DITA XML file from each FrameMaker chapter file, this is not recommended. Unless all topics in such a monolithic file are of the same topic type and are embedded in a single top-level topic, Mif2Go wraps them in a top-level <dita> element. The <dita> element is an alternative to <map>, and is meant to support legacy documents.

If you do not split FrameMaker files into topics, unless you are using the Leximation DITA-FMx plug-in for re-import into FrameMaker, the topics from each FrameMaker file must be either nested or wrapped to allow topic IDs in map references to those topics. However, if you nest topics, you lose most of the DITA reusability feature. Nesting applies only to multi-topic files.

In general, nesting topics is a Very Bad Idea. It makes re-use much harder. If instead you keep each real topic (no containers!) in a separate file, and assemble the files with ditamaps, you have a much more flexible and capable system. There is no benefit to nested topics, because you can aggregate the topics exactly the same way with a map as with a container; see §16 Configuring DITA maps.

Mif2Go forces wrapping of topics in the following circumstances:

• When NestTopicFiles=No and SplitTopicFiles=No.

• When NestTopicFiles=Yes, but map levels are such that the first topic in a file does not nest all the other topics in the file.

• When WrapTopicFiles=No, but the file contains more than one topic type.