Suggestions: How to deliver localized online help... DITA/Structure/XML?

[Garrett Alley]

Hello Framers!

We currently deliver our user guide in HTML as the online help for our
application. When the user clicks on the Help link/button/etc., the
correct section of the rather lengthy user guide is displayed. We do
this via WebWorks and TopicAlias markers, delivering "WebWorks Help" --
pretty standard stuff.

The issue I'll soon be facing is the question of how to deliver a subset
of the user guides for localization. Since we currently use the whole
user guide as the online help, the translation costs/time/etc. to
localize the entire set would be prohibitive. What I've been considering
is trying to deliver a subset of the user guides as online help for
localized versions of the application. This subset would cover the UI,
but leave the more advanced subjects in the "English Only" user guide.

I have a couple of questions, though. 

Does this approach make any sense? Would this be a good "case" for DITA?
Am I overlooking a more simple/elegant solution? Obviously I want to
avoid duplicating content where I can.

Does anyone else here have experience with a similar project?

Because our current online help is actually two separate guides (User
and Advanced guides) together in a single WebWorks Help presentation, I
considered adding a third guide, this one to be localized, and then a
separate mapping of TopicAlias Markers for localized versions. This is
probably the route I'd take, if I end up going with some sort of
structured solution (so that I could take advantage of a single source,
generating the three books).

Your thoughts?

-g-