I think he was talking in a technical sense Niek
The lost woods was constructed the same way and treated the same way as a cave or dungeon, whereas the rest was truly part of one "map" (I'm not using "map" in the GameMaker sense, where it's one big freakin' data type, but rather a collection of data meant as the same general unit).
I still think he is wrong. I think that they are still separate maps. I think that when Link is in one map, the adjacent maps that Link can travel to are loaded. And when Link crosses into the next map, that map gets activated and the old map is set as an adjacent map and new adjacent maps are loaded.
Why I think this. When I let Link run with the Pegasus boots cross multiple maps, the first map shows a normal transition. At the second map I notice a slight lag as if the map had not been fully loaded yet.
But I'm not to sure about it. As I am no ROM hacker and I don't know how Nintendo programmed it.
you're thinking about it too gamemakery --
Think about it this way; Each room is a chunk of data. Lets say, the starting area for lttp and surrounding areas are structured like this-
F0 CC FF
1F 0C 0A
A0 3E 1A
Those offsets are referencing one major body for their data. Lets say they're referencing "Overworld". Overworld holds a ton of different chunks of data that are loaded on a need-to-use basis. If you move from 0C to 0A, its obviously loading 0A and discarding 0C.
Those offsets (though fake but used in this example) are for Overworld only. When you transition to a dungeon, or in this case "The Lost Woods", it's no longer referencing the Overworld, but a different collection of data entirely.
It's because of this that you can consider the Overworld to be a seperate map from the Lost Woods; since the Overworld is a collection of individual rooms that are loaded when needed, and the Lost Woods is part of an entirely different collection of rooms.