Pen data capture and injection

• US 20050179674A1
• Filed: 02/17/2004
• Published: 08/18/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 02/17/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Tsang, Michael H., Mehrotra, Sumit
• Granted Patent: US 7,345,681 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 345/179
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 18/214 Generating training patterns; Bootstrap methods, e.g. bagging or boosting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0416 Control or interface arrangements specially adapted for digitisers

Abstract

A tool that allows a user, such as a software developer, to create test data that can consistently be employed to simulate the operation of a hardware pen or stylus. Raw pen data, such as position coordinates, pen angle and pen properties, is captured. This data is then later injected into a system being tested in place of pen data from a device driver. The raw pen data may be captured through an application programming interface invoked by a host application. The captured data can then subsequently be injected through another application programming interface invoked by a host application, such as a software testing application for testing a variety of operations of another software application. Alternately, a stand-alone utility may be used for capturing and then injecting raw pen data.

Claims

1. A method of employing pen data, comprising:

capturing pen data from a digitizer driver, and

storing the captured pen data in a pen data file.

2. The method recited in claim 1, further comprising

retrieving at least a portion of the captured pen data from the pen data file;

and

injecting the retrieved pen data into a lowermost layer of a stack of software objects.

3. The method recited in claim 2, further comprising injecting the retrieved pen data into the lowermost layer of the stack of software objects through a virtual driver.

4. The method recited in claim 2, further comprising transforming the retrieved pen data before injecting the retrieved pen data into the lowermost layer of the stack of software objects.

5. The method recited in claim 4, wherein transforming the retrieved pen data includes rotating the pen data, scaling the pen data, or determining a speed at which the pen data will be injected into the lowermost layer of the stack of software objects.

6. The method recited in claim 2, wherein the stack of software objects includes a human interface device layer, an inking interface, and an ink-enabled application.

7. A method of employing pen data, comprising:

retrieving pen data from a pen data file; and

injecting the retrieved pen data into a lowermost layer of a stack of software objects.

8. The method recited in claim 7, further comprising injecting the retrieved pen data into the lowermost layer of the stack of software objects through a virtual driver.

9. The method recited in claim 7, further comprising transforming the retrieved pen data before injecting the retrieved pen data into the lowermost layer of the stack of software objects.

10. The method recited in claim 9, wherein transforming the retrieved pen data includes rotating the pen data, scaling the pen data, or determining a speed at which the pen data will be injected into the lowermost layer of the stack of software objects.

12. The method recited in claim 7, wherein the stack of software objects includes a human interface device layer, an inking interface, and an ink-enabled application.

11. The method recited in 7, further comprising

retrieving the pen data from the pen data file as electronic ink data;

and

converting the electronic ink data to raw pen data.

13. A tool for employing pen data, comprising:

a buffer management module that retrieves pen data from a pen data file; and

a device management module that provides the retrieved pen data to a driver.

14. The tool recited in claim 13, further comprising a data transformation module that transforms the retrieved pen data before the device management module provides the retrieved pen data to a driver.

15. The tool recited in claim 13, wherein

the device management module also captures pen data provided by a driver;

and

the buffer management module stores the captured pen data in a pen data file.