Pen data capture and injection

• US 7,345,681 B2
• Filed: 02/17/2004
• Issued: 03/18/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 02/17/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Tsang, Michael H, Mehrotra, Sumit
• Primary Examiner(s): LEWIS, DAVID LEE
• Application Number:
  US10/778,346
• Publication Number:
  US 20050179674A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,491 Days
• Field of Search: 345156-184, 713/182, 382181-189, 178/18.01, 178/18.03, 715/541
• 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, storing the captured pen data in a pen data file,

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

transforming the pen data differently a defined number of times; and

injecting the retrieved pen data and each of the transformed pen data into a lowermost layer of a stack of software objects for processing, each injection being performed after processing is completed for the previous injected pen data.

2. The method recited in claim 1, further comprising injecting the retrieved pen data into the lowermost layer of the stack of software objects through a virtual driver.

3. The method recited in claim 1, further comprising transforming the retrieved pen data before injecting the retrieved pen data into the lowermost layer of the stack of software objects.

4. The method recited in claim 3, 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.

5. The method recited in claim 1, wherein the stack of software objects includes a human interface device layer, an inking interface, and an ink-enabled application.

6. A method of employing pen data, comprising:

retrieving pen data from a pen data file;

transforming the pen data differently a defined number of times; and

injecting the retrieved pen data into a lowermost layer of a stack of software objects for processing, each injection being performed after processing is completed for the previous injected pen data.

7. The method recited in claim 6, further comprising injecting the retrieved pen data into the lowermost layer of the stack of software objects through a virtual driver.

8. The method recited in claim 6, further comprising retrieving the pen data before injecting the retrieved pen data into the lowermost layer of the stack of software objects.

9. The method recited in claim 8, 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.

10. The method recited in claim 6, 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.

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

12. A tool for employing pen data, comprising:

a buffer management module that retrieves raw pen data from a pen data file,

a data transformation module that designates the parameters used to transform the raw pen data and transforms the retrieved raw pen data into pen data based on the designated parameters before the device management module provides the retrieved pen data to a driver,

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

wherein the data transformation module can transform the raw pen data multiple times using different parameters to create multiple different pen data, from the raw pen data, where after each transformation the transformed pen data is provided to said driver.

13. The tool recited in claim 12, 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.