Setup files: processing and deployment

Hi all,

I am trying to re-organize the files of my Lout-based system, in order 
to clearly separate my modifications to Lout's setup files from their 
pristine version. The set of modified files is meant to reside in a 
central place, i.e. not be put alongside with the documents processed.

While being familiar with the concepts of @Include vs. @SysInclude etc. 
and having been successful in tweaking Lout's setup files to make it do 
(almost) everything I wanted it to, I am still missing some important 
information that I could find nowhere in Lout's documentation.

1) In which order does Lout process the setup files, and which is the 
relationship between them? I am especially curious about the role of 
standard.ld.

2) I've been systematically using symlinks from my setup files into the 
Lout library and database directories, in some cases replacing the 
original file. Is this a reasonable approach? (Lout seems to compile 
some of the setup files, e.g. standard.ld, which left me with "fatal 
error: cannot write to database file /opt/lout/lout.lib/data/standard.lix".)

3) How can I keep the modifications to the original Lout installation to 
a minimum, say, like just using a reference to a kind of "root" file of 
my modified setup? Would this have to be done in standard.ld?

I hope someone can shed some light, or recommend best practices for 
keeping modifications to Lout's setup files in a separate layer somehow.

   Yves