Hi,
> Attempt 1: Just set the "template" key in "index.page":
>    ---
>    title: "Index Page"
>    template: index.page
                index.template>    --- content, markdown
>    ...
>
> Result: "index.page" gets rendered with
"index.template" *and*
> "default.template" (nested).  The docs say that this can happen
and
> recommend using "template: -" to stop it.
Yeah, the default behaviour is rendering the default.template. You  
need to explicitly stop the render pipeline setting a null template.  
This is done with the tilde character, not a dash.
> Attempt 2: Now change "index.template" to stop the template
pipeline:
>    ---
>    template: -
      template: ~>    --- content, html
>
> Result: No change.
>
> What am I doing wrong?
Explained above: don''t use ''-'' but
''~''!
> Also, while attempting to try various things, I ran into some  
> unexpected behavior with "defaultMetaInfo".  I thought that it  
> specified
> the default values, and each page was allowed to override those
> values.  However, it looks like the "defaultMetaInfo" values are
> overriding the meta info in each page.
>
>
>
> config.yaml:
>
>    File/PageHandler
>
>       defaultMetaInfo:
>
>          title: "Default Title"
>
>
>
> src/index.page:
>
>    ---
>
>    title: "Index Page"
>
>    --- content, markdown
>
>    ...
>
>
>
> When I run webgen, all my pages have the title "Default Title". 
If I
> remove the "title" entry from the "defaultMetaInfo",
then all the
> pages
> have their correct titles.  Is this expected?  It doesn''t seem to
> make sense for the top-level "defaults" to *always* override
page-
> specific settings, so I wonder what I''m missing here...
Your not missing anything ;-) It''s a bug, thanks for reporting it. I  
have looked at the devel version - there it works as expected.
Bye,
   Thomas