Workings of inventory.xml

This is just an intellectual curiosity, not an existential problem.

I was wondering if anyone has any insights on the inner workings of inventory.xml, and possible pointers between it and the other files/directories in the central inventory.  I note that there is a disclaimer right in the file, stating not to modify it.  And yet 352390.1  gives instructions to do exactly that in extreme cases.  I was in exactly the situation addressed by that note, and in testing noticed a few interesting items.

It appears that when you deinstall a home whose inventory.xml entry has an index number less than the highest used index, its entry is marked with ' REMOVED="T"'  But when you deinstall a home whose entry is the highest used index, the entry is simply removed.  And in my recent case, I had to manually remove an entry whose index was number less than the highest used index, leaving a gap in the index numbers.  At that point a '