Hi! I just had a look at the source code and I think I've found the trouble. Ages ago when this tutorial was first posted, you had to manually find a couple of things before it would compile properly. I just uploaded the raw source files as they were on lj, and those lines of code are still in there. The element that's causing the error is "flag", and there's two lines of code that I've removed. If you try copying from the google doc now, it should compile with no errors.

There's one other thing that might cause a problem, which was also treated in the original version of this tutorial (I'm not sure when crush changed it). Because lj refer to the friends page as "friends" and dw refer to it as "read", we had to manually change "friends" to "read" in the source before compiling. Now it will compile without errors either way, but you might find that when it comes to installing your layout, the "read" page will link to a "friends" url, and just return a 404 (because there is no username.dreamwidth.org/friends, obviously!) If that happens, let me know. I can correct all instances of "friends" in the Minimalist source code and then you can just copy/paste again. :)

Good luck with your layout! I've not used a Minimalist one myself, it'll be interesting to see how it copies across.