Your i.e. "
(i.e., a screen is displayed online and the user mouses-over the
field name to get a help link or pop-up box appearing, telling the
user what the field definition is)" appears to be the
definition of a ToolTip....??
To create a tooltip, if the software application is a
browser-based application, the programmer simply adds an ALT
property to the object tag. That's inline with the website code--no
calls to your help system at all. ALT content is a basic text
string: no formatting, no links.
*As a help author, you might work with the developer to
wordsmith the ToolTip text.
I suppose the webpage *could* alternately include some JS to
recognize a MouseOver event and then call up a topic from your help
system. If your help is in WebHelp format, they might just call the
URL of the topic directly. You wouldn't do anything special in RH
at all!! If your help is in CHM format, the programmer can call the
topic either by topic file name (different syntax than calling a
WebHelp topic) or you can assign a map ID number to each topic and
the programmer would call the number instead. RH can help you set
up the map ID file.