completion for dummies, compinit for neophobes?

["Aaron Davies" <aaron.davies@xxxxxxxxx>]

i love the idea of a fully-customizable completion system, but every
time i turn it on, i get horribly confused by the configuration
system, get annoyed at the changes to my UI, and give up and go back
to plain completion.

two questions:

is there a way to set up compinit completion so as to produce exactly
the same results in all cases as "default" completion? i have a lot of
muscle memory invested in things like "hit tab twice to start
iterating through list of candidates", and it's when things like that
change on me (and their customization is spread over four options each
five levels down in different parts of the compinstall menu system)
that i get bored and give up. i would love to be able to turn on the
advanced completion, have nothing change, and be able to start
experimenting from that point.

pursuant to that, my second question: is there a guide to completion
that's oriented towards working on one specific feature at a time
(e.g., just add hostname completion for ssh)?
-- 
Aaron Davies
aaron.davies@xxxxxxxxx