[PyMOL] Mac OS X install, general PyMOL function - badly need overview

[Jim Kilgore]

 I have downloaded the version (0.79.dmg.gz) of the PyMol package 
suggested by Luca Jovine, but don't know how to get a working version of 
Python installed.  The only links I can find are to Python .exe files 
for versions 2.1 and 1.5.2, and I have no idea which of the other 
downloads (xx-contrib, ext) are needed.  For that matter, is the v. 0.79 
really the latest for OS X, or is 0.82 or 0.83 options?  Which Python 
will run in the Mac Unix environment and how do I invoke it (presumably 
from the terminal) if it will?  You (W. Delano) make it clear that 
running PyMol within Python is not the way to go, then in the Mac, what 
is?   I also see no links to documentation, nor do I find any obviously 
labeled documentation files in the download.    

In general, does anyone have any tips on finding needles of required 
information in this massive haystack of a website?  If you follow links 
like "Mac OS X", you get dumped into a 10>n page listing of all 
imaginable open source apps in reverse chronological order.  Are there 
any search tools or internal pages with links to documentation (maybe 
something on the download page http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/pymol 
that I don't recognize as such?)  Finally, there was a "somebody ought 
to bell the cat"-type discussion about uploading "How TO?" files and 
tutorials back in May - did anything come of that?  A basic intro to 
PyMOL is what I, a confirmed nonprogrammer (and damned proud of it) 
need, no doubt like many others.  Maybe some academics have already put 
something like this together to prep strudents in their courses to use 
PyMOL?