There *is* no Dired documentation,
M-x info xemacs<RET>m dired<RET> (XEmacs 21.4.4) looks like dired docs
to me.
I don't see how the documentation for FSF Emacs 20.5 Dired,
which is an entirely different program from our Dired, should apply.
The docs I mentioned above seem to be right. They also seem to be
pretty much a strict subset of the dired docs for FSF Emacs 20.5
dired. All the bits I wanted (which were admittedly fairly basic)
worked fine.
Anyway, I've agreed to try merging some of the docs into the XEmacs
tree, testing of course to make sure of the accuracy of what I'm
doing. Hopefully I'll be able to look at that quite soon now.