hostap without hostap

[capacity77 at tin.it]

Hi all!
it's some months I'm trying to study hostap and all its functionalities
and now I've come to the idea that I have to start looking at the code.
A friend of mine claims that hostap is just a union of some API from wireless-tools
 and that maybe, due to a better documentation, it's easier to look at these
tools rather than the hostap itself.
Does anybody think he is right? Is it true that for example i can make a
Prism card work in master mode also with iwconfig wlan0 mode Master? 
Please advice me.
Dom