What I'm wondering is, does the `.` let you acess a field from a type somewhere, or are you calling one of those `method` things (new to OO here)?
It could be both. the . works much like backslash did on the Amiga, you use it to access an objects member (which we for obvious reasons refer to as methods or fields, as we'll have none of that fiddling around with members).So you can use it to access a Types fields, but you can also use it to invoke a Types method. It's rather versatile that way, and allows for a greater degree of black-boxing.
It seems a lot of people are mentioning a bunch of fields to access, it'd be useful to know where to get a list of what all these hidden fields are.
What you're referring to here is a list of all types' public interface, the closest you'll get there I'm affraid (unless you want to go through the source code selectively), is the 'module reference'.