I have a rules debugging variant that improves reading a little by indenting appropriately, but it’s still a firehose. Consulting it while also looking at the detailed action-processing rules and the Standard Rules’ action rules and the Standard Rules semantics is helpful. But all this gets one to a slightly less diffiult on-ramp, not an easy one.
For git repos, you could use a .gitignore to ignore
- project.inform/Build
- project.inform/Index
- project.inform/Skein.skein [but if you’ve curated it and are using it, it should be in source control]
- project.inform/manifest.plist
- project.inform/Release.blurb
- project.inform/Metadata.iFiction
- project.materials/Release
Further discussion here: Git versioning and inform 7