microcontroller - How to start with STM32F103C8T6 board?

I have been using an 8-bit AVR MCUs to build line-follower robots with students for a few years now. Now I would like to step up to an ARM Cortex-M3 because I'd like to add some more CPU-intensive features like odometry and sensor fusion.

The requirements are:

• 8 analog inputs,


• 4 PWM outputs,


• I²C,



• 2 quadrature encoder inputs,


• serial I/O,


• Self-programming wirelessly without physical access to the robot.


• Multiplatform toolchain + IDE (OS X, Linux, Windows).

The steps I've taken so far are:

I'm using this STM32F103C8 based board. I believe this MCU has everything I need, including the 2 x QEI which I planned to implement in software but this one happens to have it in hardware, so great:

I've followed this to set up my toolchain + IDE:

I've found that the documentation for this chip is scattered among a number of PDFs, which I downloaded:

I also downloaded the STM32F10x standard peripheral library, but that in turn recommended me to get the newer STM32CubeF1, which I believe is just a marketing rename of the above, so I got both:

Finally, I've also got "The Definitive Guide to the ARM Cortex-M3" by Joseph Yiu, which I'm reading as I wait for the boards to arrive.

My questions are:

1. 
   

   I'm a bit overwhelmed by documentation, to say the least, and I'm not even sure I got it all. For example, the datasheet and the reference manual state that the chip has 3 timers capable of quadrature encoded inputs. But, I can't find documentation of the registers that control the timers anywhere in the PDFs above. What am I missing?

   
   



2. 
   

   Should I use the (older?) Standard Peripheral Library, or the (newer?) cube thing? What's the difference? I understand that both libraries save me from manipulating registers directly and are the recommended way to go. Am I right?

   
   


3. 
   

   Where is the documentation for the libraries (besides the embedded doxygen comments, which are nice and all but I'd rather have a searchable html/pdf)?

   
   


4. 
   

   I chose Eclipse + GCC ARM + OpenOCD as my toolchain because I consider this is the only option that will run on the 3 main OSes without code size or other limitations. Are there any more options?