Writing Surfaces for Digital Ink

Writing Surfaces for Digital Ink

There are many innovative ways that you can integrate pen input and digital ink into your application. One consideration is which type of writing surface to provide. Here are three examples of the many ways you might choose to integrate ink:

• Ink fields
• Ink overlay
• Ink documents

When considering where your users will apply ink, you can think about writing guides such as those used in lined notebook paper or graph paper. Also, consider whether your users will need to create space for new writing as they fill a page with text and drawings.

Ink fields

Users might write or draw within a defined inking area such as a comment field on a form that provides both inking areas and conventional controls. For example, a user might write a brief paragraph of notes in a field provided on a data entry form. An area that captures a customer's signature is an increasingly common ink field. The InkPicture control provided in Microsoft Office InfoPath is an example of an ink field that might be used for signatures. The following screen shot of an accident claim form shows how the InkPicture control in Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 enables users to write their signature and mark up a drawing.

Ink overlay

Users might write, draw, or highlight on top of an existing document. For example, users can annotate documents in Microsoft Office Word by using a set of highlighters and writing pens. When they use the Journal Note Writer and Windows Journal, users can view and annotate any printable document on a Tablet PC.

The following illustration shows a user's annotations of a webpage in Windows Journal.

Ink documents

In Journal and Microsoft Office OneNote, users can create rich ink documents. They can combine handwriting, drawings, and highlighting that they create by using the tablet pen. They can then return to edit, print, and annotate their documents as needed.

The following illustration shows a landscape designer's sketches and notes in Microsoft Office OneNote 2007.

Using writing guides

In both ink fields and ink documents, you can provide visual writing guides like the lines on a piece of notebook paper or graph paper. Many users find that these guides help them write more neatly. When an application provides information about the visual guides to the text recognizer (and therefore provides hints about the probable location of the handwritten text), the application can improve the quality of text recognition. For more information about handwriting guides, see "Provide handwriting guides" in Improving Recognition Results.

Providing space for ink

If possible, allow inking areas to grow as input grows. Users often don't realize they can move ink around. They tend to erase and start over, or crowd writing into the remaining space just as they would on paper. Observe how Tablet PC Input Panel automatically expands as you add handwriting. You can similarly allow your writing surface to grown downwards as the user adds more ink.

Both Journal and OneNote provide a tool that adds space within an existing body of ink. OneNote users are often surprised to learn that they can simply add space for more handwriting!

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Build date: 12/5/2008