Paul, I seem to be missing something basic here...can you give an example? I want to have one table (main content) with the latest five articles from the folder "myfrontpage" with subject and introduction, and one table with a list of the latest 10 subjects from the folder "news". Both "sections" should be displayed on the frontpage.
If I don't use $module_result.content, how do I link to the main content of my choice?
You should always use $module_result.content on your main pagelayout. This pulls in the content from the location the user is currently viewing.
Instead what you need to do is modify the template for the content object that produces the code for $module_result.content. Remember, this is what each folder, article, etc does.
and at the code halfway down. The fetch statement pulls in articles from a location and the loop underneath displays each using node_view_gui. If you have a different location for your new you would replace the $node.node_id with the appropriate value.
btw, in theory it is possible to code *everything* in the main pagelayout, but the template override system allows the developer to create many more types of sites.