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We did something like this in our old GUI which was implemented in Flex... Click a '?' and get an overlay to describe the widget. We also implemented formatted tooltips and a text region that can go anywhere in the GUI. All these pick up their content from external XML files.
Our new GUI is implemented in Angular JS. We implemented a service in Angular that loads DITA and transforms it into whatever you need... So far we transform to HTML or JSON. With that we can inject DITA content anywhere we want in the GUI. FOr example, we have walkthrough tours that use bootstrap.js to pop up balloons next to GUI widgets. They can move you to a different page in the GUI if the next step requires it. We also do the reverse to make wizards... A balloon pops up and tells you where to go... As you step through the suggested workflow, the balloons follow along with you to talk about what you're doing. These come from valid DITA... Procedure topics. So we can include the same content in HTML help or PDF.
The technology is open source... The transform service is included in the 4D Pubs GIT project:https://github.com/turbonomic/4Dpubs
That repos is behind our latest changes, but I can get around to updating it if you're interested.
cud
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