InkEdit Control

InkEdit Control

Description of InkEdit control for the Tablet PC.

The InkEdit control provides an easy way to capture, recognize, and display ink.

The Win32 implementation of the InkEdit control is based on the RichEdit control. The .NET implementation of InkEdit is based on the RichTextBox control.

The primary purpose of the InkEdit control is to collect ink, recognize it, and display it in text form. Additionally, it supports displaying ink as an embedded object with text formatting capabilities, such as bold and underline.

Gestures and Correction

InkEdit supports the following gestures:

Gesture	Gesture Name	Action
	Down-left	Enter
	Down-left-long	Enter
	Up-right	Tab
	Up-right-long	Tab
	Right	Space
	Left	Backspace

Gesture events that you can handle contain gesture, stroke, and cursor information you can use to send text to InkEdit or place data on the clipboard.

InkEdit also provides a correction user interface that allows users to view and select from alternates, use the on-screen keyboard, and character/letter/block recognizers.

Other Details

InkEdit is designed to work well in a form scenario for single line as well as multi-line text entry and editing. The primary intended use for InkEdit is to get text input from a user in the form of handwriting. By default, ink input is recognized and text is inserted in its place. The default user interface for InkEdit resembles that of the RichTextBox control, except when the user is laying down ink. You can display original ink rather than text; however, the ink is scaled to the current input font size of the InkEdit control and is displayed inline with other text.

The InkEdit control allows persistence and loading of its data using the same SaveFile and LoadFile methods as the standard Windows Forms InkEdit control.

Note: For security reasons, the SaveFile and LoadFile methods are not available for the InkEdit control used in Visual Basic 6. Instead, you must use standard procedures to open/close a file, stream the input/output, and set the RTF or Text property.

The InkEdit control is set to recognize ink as text by default. To enable users to add ink as ink, set the InkInsertMode property to InsertAsInk.

For detailed reference information about the InkEdit control, see InkEdit Control Reference.

Note: If you use the Win32 InkEdit control and place it inside a group box, make sure the box has a transparent style; otherwise, InkEdit is not able to collect ink.

Note: To ensure ink is displayed properly, call the InkEdit control's Refresh method when it receives an HScroll or VScroll event.

The following sections detail the use of the InkEdit control:

• Instantiating InkEdit
• Word vs. Character Recognition
• Displaying Ink as Ink
• Sending Messages to the Win32 API with Visual Basic 6
• Using InkEdit on Earlier Versions of Windows
• Using an Application Dictionary with InkEdit