Electronic ink as a software object
First Claim
1. A method for providing electronic ink to an application program for display thereof, comprising:
- receiving electronic ink data;
creating an electronic ink object for maintaining information that corresponds to the electronic ink data, the object having ink-related functionality associated therewith including a function that when called interprets the electronic ink data and renders an image of the ink data therefrom;
embedding the object into a document that has data therein arranged in a format used by the application program; and
providing an interface to the application program to call the function, the application program calling the function via the interface to render the image of the ink data.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Described is electronic ink maintained as a software object, thereby associating ink functionality with electronic ink data. The ink may be separated into words or characters, with one object per word or character. By the associated functionality, applications that deal with embedded objects in general can automatically benefit from electronic ink, including having the object'"'"'s functionality render the ink data as part the application'"'"'s document. Further, because the ink data is maintained as an object, the data is automatically persisted in association with the document into which it is embedded. Ink-aware applications may call on methods of the electronic ink object to adjust formatting, search recognized ink along with text, and perform other functions. Via the electronic ink object, electronic ink substantially approaches much of the behavior normally available with text data, without requiring applications to interpret the ink data.
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Citations
18 Claims
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1. A method for providing electronic ink to an application program for display thereof, comprising:
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receiving electronic ink data;
creating an electronic ink object for maintaining information that corresponds to the electronic ink data, the object having ink-related functionality associated therewith including a function that when called interprets the electronic ink data and renders an image of the ink data therefrom;
embedding the object into a document that has data therein arranged in a format used by the application program; and
providing an interface to the application program to call the function, the application program calling the function via the interface to render the image of the ink data. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions, which when executed perform steps, comprising:
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receiving electronic ink data;
creating an electronic ink object for maintaining information that corresponds to the electronic ink data, the object having associated ink-related functionality including a function that when called interprets the electronic ink data to render an image of the ink data from the electronic ink data;
embedding the object into a document that contains data in a format used by an application program; and
providing an interface to the application program to call the function to render the image of the ink data.
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18. In a computing environment, a system comprising:
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means for providing electronic ink data;
means for creating an electronic ink object for maintaining information that corresponds to the electronic ink data, the object having associated ink-related functionality including a function that when called interprets the electronic ink data to render an image of the ink data from the electronic ink data;
means for embedding the object into an application program file; and
interface means for receiving a call from the application program to render the image of the ink data.
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Specification