What would you do if you had more programmatic access to the Tablet PC TIP?
The last two posts illustrate two possibilities: One would be to add recognition of symbolic equations and the other would be to add recognition of source code syntax. How about recognizing AutoCAD commands? And, no, I’m thinking of more access than BNF-style recognition rules. For example, I bet Buzz Bruggeman would die for a way to get at the TIP so he could make ActiveWords even more useful on a Tablet.
Wouldn’t it be great if the Tablet team could invite up a very small cadre of 3rd party developers in an intense week of development to try to make this happen? Radical I know. But an experimental hybrid between community development and proprietary dev might spark some interesting results.
Loren: this is a great idea and I know Buzz would be really excited to get one of his developers into such an intensive learning environment. To amplify on the idea, I think a few of the standout Tablet developers who have demonstrated how the existing SDK can be used well should be included as well. Three nominations (excluding you, of course) are Josh Einstein (Tablet Enhancements for Outlook) and someone from the development teams at Mindjet (MindManager) and Agilix (GoBinder).
I agree: A terrific idea. I would love to see something like the SHARK Shorthand keyboard or Alphatap integrated into the TIP, to increase the variety of input possibilities.
The TIP–new to Service Pack 2–is one of the best new features in the Tablet OS for users. Scratch that. It’s one of the best features in the OS–new or not.
But as I tweak my applications to work better with the TIP (because it is so good), I find myself wanting to programmatically control it or parts of it. I’m guessing there a lot of developers that see this too.
This is one area where there probably should be an exposed API where Microsoft can leverage 3rd parties to enhance the Tablet experience. That’s why I’m thinking that this is one example where a community/Microsoft effort could benefit everyone.
The work might all get thrown away or prove too difficult to implement at this time, but I’m guessing several ISVs/community members would take the gamble if Microsoft did too.
Normally I’d say let the developers at Microsoft do their job and let the customers (ISVs/developers) refine and not define the product. But in some cases, such as this, where there’s an API at stake, I see the opportunity for a more coorpertive effort.
It’s not open source. I don’t want to be handed Microsoft’s source code and have to figure it all out or even how to build it. However, I bet it’s tremendously efficient to be able to work side-by-side at times with someone who has access to the source–especially at times like this.
Procedularly I don’t know if it’s practical to branch the code for cooperative development efforts, but if a way could be found to do it, it could provide a way to leverage one great part of Open Source development–community extensions.
Of course, another approach that is much safer is to work through an API spec and have people write to these. I’d go for that too, but I’m guessing a hands on effort could produce a more useful set of extensions quicker and cheaper since we’re all learning what the needs truly are.
When I was in MS, I talked to someone (forget who) about the possibility of making the TIP interface available as a control for Tablet PC developers. SP2 was too far along to have this added, but they agreed it was a great idea.
Basically, you could drop a TIP-like control on a form and have access to line-oriented ink input with the in-place recognition/correction interface.
I’d like to see this happen. With all of the attention on Infinotes, people are forgetting that most input is not free form. Better ink fields are required.
(Sorry the above should say “When I was at MS”. I do not want to imply that I worked there. I was merely visiting.)
There is some programmatic access to the TIP via the PenInputPanel object which has some limitations (maintains non-managed resources). You can show it(attached to a window or control ), you can move it, improve recognition with factoids ( for your scenarios this might be useful with some additional work-probably messy) and set the panel that the user sees(keyboard, character or writind pad). Beyond that you mght need to develop your own SymbolicEquationsInputPanel component. I love the community development idea too. Hope Microsoft is listening
see http://www.iggysoft.com/2004/11/programming-in-ink.html