tags for functions

[Ted Zlatanov]

Ted Z wrote in comp.emacs and gnu.emacs.help:

> On Sat, 17 Jan 2009 10:29:45 -0800 (PST) Xah Lee <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> XL> Note that listing related functions in a function's doc is in many
> XL> programing manuals. e.g Mathematica, MS's JScript, PHP ... they are
> XL> quite useful. Because for those not expert yet of a lang (which is
> XL> majority), often they do not know similar functions or do not know if
> XL> there's manual section that list such, and often are confused about
> XL> the differences of many functions that seems the same ....
>
> I agree this would be useful. It's best done with tags IMO, rather
> than explicitly listing the related functions. For example, motion
> commands should be tagged "motion" and then every command with that
> tag can automatically list every motion command. The key is that the
> extra work is in classification, not in tediously listing every
> command's peers.
>
> Tags I could use: motion, file, coding-system, menu, buffer, process
>
> Each package should probably tag its commands with the package name.
>
> Short tags are not always descriptive enough, but long tags get
> unpleasantly verbose so the real art is in balancing between the two.
>
> Anything more hierarchical than tags is painful to manage in the long run.

A tangential discussion about the inconsistent naming of motion commands
led me to the proposal above.

I think it would be a nice addition to Emacs.  I did a search and didn't
find prior relevant discussions.

Every package with a comment stating Keywords: at the beginning could
automatically give those keywords as tags to its functions.  That would
probably be 50% or less of the total needed tags, but it's an easy
start.

Ted