I was playing with cylc set via the web interface for a specific task. I think it would be very useful, and help prevent errors, if the form could be a bit error proofed. For example, if you do+ ADD ITEM for prerequisites, it would be very useful if it was a drop down list of actual prerequisites instead of having to look up which one you want/need to set. I understand this may be problematic if its for multiple tasks, but, if you go into the set form via a task, it could be locked down to just that task.
Providing auto-complete in GUI forms is a long-term ambition, e.g, auto-completing workflows, cycles, families, tasks, etc. Auto-completing task outputs would be possible (though tricky for groups as you note).
We have already attempted to auto-complete task outputs in the Bash completion script, e.g, type cylc set workflow//cycle/task --pre=<tab> and you’ll get a list of valid outputs to choose from (providing that the task is in the n-window).
Getting this into the GUI is perfectly possible. This snippet from our design document shows were we would like to be:
With suggestions, auto-completion and validation built into the forms.