After working with Samba for about 3/4 year I am still having a feeling that the information in HOWTO is desperately scattered around. The user has to read the whole HOWTO to understand a single thing. A normal person forgets the beginning earlier than reaches the end of the HOWTO because the HOWTO is long.
I'm sorry, but that's the way the howto is supposed to be. There are a lot of things in Samba that can be configured and the HOWTO covers them all. If you want a guide describing how to set up a specific configuration from the start, use the By Example Guide.