TextAutoComplete on a long line of text with smaller drop downs?

[AK]

Hello,

I need some advice on what is the best way to enter a lot of tags into 
an app text ctrl. I'm not sure whether to go with a single long ctrl or 
with a row of smaller ones, in latter case I could use 
TextCtrlAutoComplete. The use pattern is this: when entering a new 
record, (which could be very short and many of them may be entered in 
sequence), user has to input a number of tags, most of them will already 
be in the database, but some may be new. I want to make it as easy and 
hassle-free as possible to enter the tags that are already in the db. 
One thing I already know how to do is to use TextCtrlAutoComplete and 
make a bunch of entry fields in a row, and then an optional 2nd and 
maybe 3rd row which can be activated if needed. But I'm leaning towards 
using a single long line, which has an advantage that short tags will 
take very little space and therefore you won't need to have more lines, 
and line can scroll off for cases when you need to add a huge amount of 
tags, or some extra-long tags. That practically should never happen, 
though, but it is significantly better to be able to avoid the 2nd line. 
I also feel that having one long line where you type tags and separate 
them by commas feels like a more streamlined, easier process than 
tabbing between several textctrls - i.e. with tabbing you will feel more 
inclined to have to look at the screen after entering each tag, whereas 
with single control you'll just type all of them and then check if 
they're good.

At first I wanted to try using TextCtrlAutoComplete and set it to 
smaller size, but I could not find a way to do this. I looked at the 
source file and it does not set its size anywhere, only the size of 
listctrl is set, which is the drop down, it is set to wx.DefaultSize, 
but if I override it with a different size, both textctrl and the 
listctrl end up being the same size as before. I think TextCtrl then 
somehow follows the size of the list, but I could be wrong. I tried 
changing it with .SetSize, but that does not work either.

If going with the long line, the way it should work is similar to text 
completion in terminal, i.e. on incomplete word you can hit tab to 
either complete it or show possible choices, then add more letters and 
hit tab again. The drop down should not be the whole width of line, of 
course, but only about 100px.

What's the best way to do this? Thanks! -ak