Filter Tags as You Type
 

The current tag snippets are dependent on the mouse. As the numbers of tags increases, I find myself wishing more and more for the ability to start typing the tag that I want and have RW filter/suggest the tags based on what I'm typing. In other words, I would like the tag-select interface to be more like Gmail or Evernote. This would make adding tags more keyboard friendly, which will make applying tags a much quicker operation.

+1 to this. I love the concept of tags, and I use them all the time in Evernote. Though I also find them very useful in Realm Works, they are a bit cumbersome to add. A more keyboard centric entry method would be most appreciated.

+1.

And could we add:

Click a hotkey
Start typing a topic name
As you type it will start suggesting already existing topic names.

Actually much the same (maybe not programming wise...).

Would ensure you got the name of the villain right and make it faster overall.

+1

Oh yes indeedy!

but please take care that this "instant show topic feature" (which i would like too) does not slow down the responsiveness of the GUI...

better to see a "pending sandbox" while you can still fully access and w/o slowdown all the items of the popup or cancel , while its searching in the background.

Uhh - not sure what you mean about "pending sandbox".

I think we are talking about the same. If you type something that is not in the dropdown box it should just close the dropdown box and continue without any hassle.

I just meant that if you type in "the" , you would probably get many results and while the system is displaying them and showing more and more, there would be likely some kind of "search ongoing" symbol or icon indicating that RW is still searching.

During this time, I should be able to work with the application w/o trouble, in other words: in case I change my mind and do something else, or pick one of the entries shown, it should work without loss of performance.

I know several applications, that "start searching as you type" and then run with a severly reduced performance, so it's hard to click on something or do anything at all :)

True. There was a time when it was painful to apply tags in Evernote. Obviously, if it causes the program to hang, that would be no good. But there has to be some way to apply tags by keyboard. The current method of applying tags in RW is kinda clunky.

We are on the same page here - that's why I would like a hot key to be pressed before the search'n'suggestion routine should be invoked, so it shouldn't search at all.

Maybe it can be done, so that you could type When they discover the [hotkey] Ma and then it starts searching and finding the MacGuffin even though its topic name is "The MacGuffin" - that is, it searches for single whole words in the topic list not just the entire string.

This way you could avoid myriad hits.

I also imagine (this is a program issue, so I am just making things up here for lack of insight), that RW could utilize a text file with all the topic names in and just search through that with no need to enter every topic and search out the topic name and alias in every topic. But I imagine that is how it already works; RW being a database the topic names and the aliases should be in one single (and simple) table with just a link to the topic in question, thus easy and fast to search through with a minimum drain on ressources.
But I digress...

Besides, I have never experienced a slowly in programs/computers when using programs with a similar feature. Maybe I am just lucky using the few programs that get it right or maybe because my computer is reasonable fast.