>SNIP<
   To be specific, is there anything like a table-of-contents to, say, the
   packages that we have for netbsd? Unfortunately, the habitual terseness of
   Unix people makes the program names uninformative, and I notice that most
   of them seem to lack a statement of purpose in the README.

   Is anything like a "Users' Guide" available?

I assume you know about the man pages and don't find them helpful?

For those that haven't used the man pages, they are not _always_ models of
clarity, but try typing from the command line
man man
and read the man pages on man pages. Then try your favorite program to see
what man has to say:
man ftp
man chmod
and so on.

Phil