What order should I deal with the GNOME packages?

There is no one answer to this question, but here's an order that should work well:

glib
gtk+
imlib
orbit
gtk-doc
libgtop
gtk-engines
gnome-libs
gnome-core
control-center
gnome-print
mc
gnome-guile
gnome-python
gnome-objc
gtk--
anything else, as needed, in whatever order