Framemaker DITA pdf export creates new page for every DITA Topic

Question

I have created a Dita Map in Framemaker 12 containing some Topics. When I build a pdf document with Dita Open Toolkit (which is supplied by Adobe), I get a pdf document which has a page break after each Topic.

I don't want a page break after each topic. How can I change this behavior?

Answer 1

A lot depends on how you've structured your map. If each topicref is at the top level, then the implication is that you have a new "chapter" so you have to have a page break. If the topics are supposed to be ordered hierarchically, you need to nest the topicrefs and that will avoid the page break. So, if you have something that looks like this:

<topicref href="firsttopic.dita"/>
<topicref href="secondtopic.dita/>
<topicref href="thirdtopic.dita/>

You always get breaks between the topics. However, if what you really wanted was the first topic to be the parent of the other two, your map should look something like:

<topicref href="firsttopic.dita">
   <topicref href="secondtopic.dita/>
   <topicref href="thirdtopic.dita/>
</topicref>

The page break will come with whatever topic follows the reference to the first topic.