Makefile.am, ./autogen, linking, subdirs and ___NOT___ .a or .la files

look every body  ... this is beyond ridiculious

all I want to do is write a program ... but how can I do that when I cant get
./autogen to produce the proper makefiles.

Could someone tell me exactly how to do the following:

there is a program called GEditPlus (GEdit+)
This program is take the nice features that edit plus for windows has ...

the source tree will have a the following structure

editor/
    /src
        main.c          -- the main file that will produce main.o -> geditplus
        main.h          -- included by most source files to access the global
                            struct
        /menu           -- this directory contains all of the files that deal
                            with defining and implementing the menus and menu
                            calls
            menu.h      -- defines the menubars mainmenu_UI struct, includes
                            filemenu.h ... helpmenu.h
            menu.c      -- very little is in here ...
            filemenu.h  -- defines the file menu and its sub menus, and the
                            function prototypes
            filemenu.c  -- implements the functions defined in filemenu.h
            editmenu.h  -- defines the edit menu and its sub menus, and the
                            function prototypes
            editemenu.c -- implements the functions defined in editmenu.h
                .