1) there is significant documentation at splunk.com - eg:
http://www.splunk.com/base/Documentation/latest/Developer/FormIntro
Quite possibly you've just been looking in the wrong place?
eg: setting the property charting.data.search is a very advanced thing to do additional filtering and is not at all how you set the main search.
2) or if you'd rather tinker with living breathing examples you can pull down the UI Exampels app and learn in a more hands on fashion. It sounds like this might be the way to go for you (since you somehow went straight to the advanced charting documentation)
To do this:
go to the "Launcher" app,
within Launcher, go to "Browse more apps",
then scroll down until you get to "UI Examples for 4.1".
Install that app and once it's installed go to it and start reading through the examples. You'll find a number of examples talking about building different kinds of views in both the simplified XML (ie <form> and <dashboard> ) as well as the advanced XML (ie <view> )
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