SPICE to gnucap transition

(perhaps this should go to the 'help-gnucap' list?)

I'd like to give gnucap a chance. I suspect most potential gnucap users
are similar to me: familiar with SPICE but wishing for something 'better'.

1) What is the recommended approach for users wishing to transition from
SPICE to gnucap?

So far, I've done the following:

 - looked at the GNUCAP website
 - looked at the mailing list archives for ~ last 6 months.
 - downloaded and installed the snapshot release from 21FEB07
 - learned the basic overview of gnucap from man/gnucap-man.pdf
 - ran a few of the examples in examples/
 - tried (but failed) to run gnucap on some sample SPICE decks

2) Are there any gnucap unit-test style examples?

For example, most people familiar with electronics will understand basic
things like say the step response of an RC low pass filter. Has anyone
designed a set of examples that attempt to minimize circuit complexity but
maximize gnucap's capabilities? I google'd around but didn't find anything
useful.

3) What is the preferred waveform viewer? From the archives it appears
that gwave is the one. (Or, at least gwave is the only one that accepts
the ASCII tabular output of gnucap.)

Thanks,
Scott