trying to understand "install" command

[Brian Sammon]

I'm trying to figure out how the "install" command works.
I've looked at http://www.gnu.org/manual/grub/html_node/install.html and I 
find it to be rather confusing.
Is there any other documentation available out there that I should be 
looking at?  (I know, I could look at the source code-- but I'm trying to 
save myself the hours of time that that would take)
Should I just start barraging you guys with questions?

Such as:
 How is the argument list parsed?  I'm especially confused by the 
collection of
  optional arguments that come after the "stage2_file" argument and what
  happens if you only have one or two arguments after it.
 This command must modify one or more of the images to tell it where to 
look
   for the next step in the boot process.  Does it do this before or after
   writing them to the disk?

I've got a few more where those came from...