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This is a very quick draft of a panel which would make the Categories assignment much more easier. In the upper part we have a Drop Down Combo Box in which the user will type a text (pattern) and the engine after a small delay will show in the opened (dropped) list all the Categories which contain the entered text anywhere in the body of the Category. For example if someone will type "low", the engine will display "Low-Angle", "Flowers" and "Glow' (and any other category which contains "low" for that matter). The engine is easy to write using the pattern-matching capabilities of the SQL standard (have a look at "Like" and "Containing" operators). Don't be afraid about speed, it will be quite fast. At the moment of writting, we handle with such engines near to 100000 items from which the several tenths (or hundredths) which are displayed, are displayed (near to) real time in a much more complex setup (multi-user LAN, transaction control etc.).
On the bottom we have the classical "Sets" subsystem. In fact it is "Categories of Categories" (or in DAM language: Categories of Keywords). Besides one[*] special Set (the "Recently Used") the others are user-made and tames the common phenomenon which arises when one catalogs a folder of photos. Usually, such folders have interrelated photos, in most cases comming from the same memory card downloaded from camera. Hence, at that moment in time, the catalloger wants just a certain subset of categories with which he wants to work. Clicking on one category will assign that category to the current selection.
On the bottom of the form are several buttons to allow the management of the Sets (Add, Rename, Delete) and the items in the Sets (Add/Remove to/from Set). Beware, a category can be in 0, 1 or more Sets. For example "Portrait" can be in "Studio", "Weddings", "Sports" and in other sets. A button which isn't present in the draft above is "Assign Full Set" which will assign all the categories to the current selection of photos. From implementation POV it is a classical many-to-many relationship which can be modeled with few tables in the SQLite database.
There are plenty of programs which implement both features (for ex. Lightroom, AfterShootPro, IDImager, PhotoSupreme etc. etc. etc.) because these (together with keyboard shortcuts discussed in a previous message) are the bread-and-butter of keywording in photo management.
I'm at your disposition for any futher clarifications and discussions.
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[*] there are also other special sets which can be maintained by the program (like "Suggested", "Related" etc.) but let's keep the things simple for the time being.
