Pen Tools, Erasing, and Editing

Pen Tools, Erasing, and Editing

Introduction to pen tools, erasing, and editing.

For ink editing, formatting, and erasing, use the following recommendations.

Changing ink color and thickness should be very accessible, quick operations that require no more than two or three taps of the tablet pen (for example, one tap activates a tool and the second tap selects an option from a visual palette of choices). Changing color is likely to be a more frequent task than modifying ink thickness. You may provide a user interface (UI) for pen formatting by using either or both:

• A color palette from which the user can easily choose a different ink color. Other formatting options are available in a dialog box.

  

• A pen list that offers pens of different color and thickness. This is a richer, more stylistic way of presenting ink formatting.

  

For more information on ink formatting support, see the DrawingAttributes Class topic in the Tablet PC Platform application programming interface (API) reference.

Supporting erase functionality enables users to easily erase and then reenter individual letters in a word or parts of drawings that they have produced with ink. Your application can use two erasing models:

• Point erase, in which the user erases ink one pixel at a time in the stroke.
• Stroke erase, in which the user touches anywhere on a stroke to erase the entire stroke.