[tomboy-list] Suggestion: make 'Search All Notes' behave more like Notational Velocity

[tchomby]

Tomboy seems to be the leading note-taking application for Gnome/GTK
and in general I really like it, and I like where it's going with the
focus on automatic note synchronisation and a web service.

As everyone probably knows Notational Velocity is a fast note-taking
app for OS X: <http://notational.net/> (it has an unmaintained free
software GTK clone called Notetak <http://liw.iki.fi/liw/notetak/>).

Notational Velocity's killer feature is its use of instantaneous
incremental search and that "the same area is used for both searching
for existing notes and entering the descriptions of new notes".

This seems like an obvious improvement to Tomboy's Search All Notes window:

1. The search should happen as you type, not when you stop typing.

2. I should be able to open a note from Search All Notes without using
the mouse or resorting to multiple presses of Tab. Is this possible?

What I suggest is that the top note shown should be highlighted and
pressing Return will open that note. As you type the incremental
search will narrow down the results and change the highlighted note.
You should also be able to change the highlighted note by pressing the
up and down arrows (but with the search area focused, without having
to move the keyboard focus to the list of notes first).

I notice that the up and down arrows currently move through the
history of things you've typed in the search field. In that case
ctrl+up and ctrl+down could be used to move the highlighted note.

3. I should be able to create a note directly from the search field by
pressing Return when no notes are shown in the list of notes. What
I've typed in the search field becomes the title of the new note.

Combined with a hot key to open Search All Notes this interaction is
really fast and habit-forming, it doesn't require you to move your
hands from the keyboard, and it helps you to find existing notes on a
topic and add to them instead of creating a new note.

4. Potentially add to the Search All Notes window a preview of the
currently selected note, in a pane beneath the list of notes,
emulating NV's layout.