[Zope] URL Rewriting chaos

[zope at tropolinux.com]

Hi,
I've tried everything in both the Zope and Plone books and read the Apache 
URL Rewrite guide also, but I just can't seem to get the silly thing 
working!
I'm sure that it does ;-) but for some reason it is beyond me.
Let me tell you what I've tried, and tell me which one should work:
I am using apache to rewrite the urls. 

1. Host monsters, both one in the zope root folder, and multiple in each 
plone site's folders.  I have tried both with the mappings and without (even 
though the books say they're not needed with apache). 

2. apache rewrite rules, this is how (the current attempt looks)
please assume that the big url is all on one line, email programs may have 
changed that. 

<VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerName example.net
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteRule ^/(.*) 
http://example.net:8080/plone_site/VirtualHostBase/http/example.net:80/Virtu 
alHostRoot/$1 [L,P]
</VirtualHost> 

I have tried all combinations of things in the 'example.net' places above, 
including the fqdn, local ip number and local host name. 

Is there a shortcoming in the documentation here?  Have I accidentally 
skipped over a word somewhere that was more important than I realised? 

Please help me on this, it is the MAJOR sticking point in convincing people 
that it's a good idea for us (and them) to move to zope :-) 

Thanks in advance.