Re: Emacs cvs newbie problems

[Richard Stallman]

    GNU Packages
    Texinfo documentation system
    Printing Tools
    GNU programming tools
    Emacs
    GNU Gettext Utilities
    GNU programming support
    GNU libraries
    GNU programming documentation
    GNU organization
    GNU music project
    TeX
    DOS 
    Other things
    Individual utilities

TeX, DOS and Emacs seem like useful categories.  "Printing" would be a
good category, but the name "Printing tools" is not as good.

The others don't make any sense.  They are either too broad, or too
narrow, or they focus on the wrong distinctions (such as GNU vs
non-GNU or tools vs support).

Texinfo probably belongs in the TeX category, and in a category
called "Text Formatting".  Gettext belongs in "Internationalization".

Programming tools probably should be divided into
two categories, "Programming" and "Scripting".
Popular languages such as C, C++, Perl, Python, and Java
probably deserve categories too.

Do you see the logic now?  Imagine that you know vaguely what sort of
job you want to do but you don't know what programs there are to do
it.  What categories would be useful for you?

It's like choosing subject listings for the Subject catalog in a
library: you want them to be useful for people to find books they have
never heard of.  "GNU libraries" as a subject is analogous to "Random
House hardcovers"--not a useful subject classification.