Programming FPGA, Verilog and Nios softcore

Wow. Nice of you. Altera should pay you for your services if they haven't already.

I am in Pure/Applied Science area with little programming and digital experience, but if I get the right tutorial, I can learn from there onwards. I am going through your reply very thoroughly, trying to link some of what you said with the "My First Nios Software Design" under IDE environment.

Q1:

When you said "the software can be used to download 'itself' into flash", is this what you mean: "that this can be done if I have the utilities for doing this".

As I am now (without friendly firmware and software engineers around to ask for favours ), I would have to convert the *.SOF to *.POF, and write the *.POF to the flash device?

Q2:

In the Nios Software Design, to run a C program in the Nios configured into the FPGA, I need to "run the project as Nios II hardware" from the Nios IDE environment. So if I have a digital part communicating with the Nios II hardware, do I still have to do this through the Nios IDE?

Q3:

If I just want to use the Nios II in my digital design, is it the "software developer tutorial" or "hardware developer tutorial" that I should be looking at?

Or is the info in Quartus Handbook material which says "Embedded Peripherals" and "SOPC builder" more suitable?

Studying the document is one thing, but finding the right document to study is also another!

Thank you.