Electronic ink as a software object
First Claim
1. In a computing device, a system comprising:
- an input device configured to receive handwriting input and convert the handwriting input to electronic ink information;
a mechanism configured to provide an object to maintain electronic ink data that corresponds to the electronic ink information, the object being embeddable within a software application and having electronic ink-related functionality maintained as part of the object;
executable code associated with the object comprising functionality arranged to interpret the electronic ink data, output a representation of the electronic ink data therefrom, and to enable manipulation of the format representation of the electronic ink data; and
a software module that invokes the functionality of the object via at least one interface to cause the object to interpret the electronic ink data to output the representation.
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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
20 Claims
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1. In a computing device, a system comprising:
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an input device configured to receive handwriting input and convert the handwriting input to electronic ink information; a mechanism configured to provide an object to maintain electronic ink data that corresponds to the electronic ink information, the object being embeddable within a software application and having electronic ink-related functionality maintained as part of the object; executable code associated with the object comprising functionality arranged to interpret the electronic ink data, output a representation of the electronic ink data therefrom, and to enable manipulation of the format representation of the electronic ink data; and a software module that invokes the functionality of the object via at least one interface to cause the object to interpret the electronic ink data to output the representation. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A computer-readable medium having stored thereon a data structure, comprising,
a data field including electronic ink data; -
at least one interface for invoking functionality associated with the data structure, including functionality for rendering a representation of the electronic ink data; and the functionality invoked via the interface by executable code that has opened a document containing the data structure, the functionality invoked to render a representation of the electronic ink data relative to other information contained in the document; and at least one other data field that maintains information related to the format of the rendered electronic ink data representation, and further comprising other functionality associated with the data structure to enable the executable code to modify the style information. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification