In DITA `map`, link to child map without embedding it

Question

I have a DITA map. It links to a number of child topics. I also wish to link to another map. But, the DITA-OT publishing engine embeds the children of that map instead.

Can anyone point me to the DITA construct to just include a link to the child map?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE map PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Map//EN" "map.dtd">
<map>
    <title></title>
    <mapref href="catalog.ditamap" format="ditamap"/>
    <topicref href="whats-new.dita" format="dita"/>
    <topicref href="quality.dita" format="dita"/>
    <topicref href="distribution.dita" format="dita"/>
    <topicref href="guide.dita" format="dita"/>
    <topicref href="feedback.dita" format="dita"/>
</map>

Answer 1

From each DITA Map a single publication is generated. So indeed when you refer to a DITA Map in another, the DITA Map gets expanded in place.

To what output format are you publishing?

Are you looking for a feature like "Cross-book linking"? Linking from one publication to another? The DITA standard has some support for this but the publishing support needs to be customized further for this: https://blog.oxygenxml.com/topics/cross_book_links.html

Maybe the easiest would be to add a topicref with scope=external and format=html to a remote URL where the second publication is uploaded.