Good news! After hacking away at this for however long it's been, I finally found which of the many FMs explains how the synthesizer infers logic from the HDL. For the record, it's here. Accept no substitues.

It seems so far like the data sheet explains the part itself better than anything else. I guess that's no surprise.

The one thing I still haven't found is a document that explains in detail the function and operation of all the little software utilities that make up the ISE package. This hasn't been a big concern for me yet, however, because the GUI interface makes it easy enough to sort of bluff your way through the creation, simulation, and implementation of a simple design.

-- Russ