Keyword vs tag

man, I am bummed. I imported a 30K library from iPhoto, many of which were tagged, labeled etc. There were a few thousand I had planned on tagging once in Aperture.

In iPhoto, there were shortcut keys that you could apply to the tags... it made tagging very easy. No mousing around, dragging and dropping. Just hit the keys you want and boom, it was tagged. Next photo, etc. I could rip through 100s of photos in no time just typing the shortcut associated (d for daughter, s for sun, C for California, etc.).

Aperture's keyword handling is great for when you are processing a job you have just finished (I guess), but you are limited to 8 shortcuts in the Keyword control panel. That's just lame. I am usually tagging family members, artwork and so forth from a fairly limited set of 20 to 30 tags I regularly use. The more obscure tags / keywords I apply after tagging the standards.

At any rate, I'm disappointed in this omission by Apple. 8 keyboard shortcuts for tags is practically useless (and almost insulting). Give us a way to add as many shortcuts as we want so we can quickly tag without having to mouse around, search for, drag, drop keywords.

Anyone else finding this annoying?