We’re making incremental progress with the ink gestures addin for Word. Right now Bob is working on integrating better with the Office CommandBars. It’s been quite tedious and worth a whole post unto itself. That’ll have to wait though.
In the meantime, here’s another screenshot movie that captures some of the latest editing features we’ve exposed.
Some of the features shown here that weren’t included in the last sequence:
* Open bracket and close bracket select text blocks
* Some gestures operate at the selection level now. For instance, writing a 2 on a selection converts the selection to double space. Likewise, writing a 1 on the selection converts it to single space and writing 1.5 sets the paragraph spacing to 1 1/2 lines.
* The capitalize gesture can work at the letter, word, or selection level. Italics, bold, and so forth also can operate on selections now too.
* For a given selection the Font dialog can be brought up by writing an ‘F’ over the selection. Similarly, the Paragraph Format dialog can be brought forward by writing ‘P’ and the Styles dialog by writing ‘S.’
* Writing a dot over a selection converts the selection to a bullet list. Writing a dot on a selected bullet list, restores the paragraph to a non-bullet list state. Similarly, to toggle between a number list, you can write a ‘#’ character over a selection.
* Punctuation can be overwritten or inserted in context. For instance, to replace a comma with a period, simply draw a period over the comma.
http://www.tabletpccorner.net/blog/?2005/08/26/45-ink-gestures-dans-microsoft-word-extraordinaire
Has there been any more development on InkPlayer?
Now that I have a Tablet PC, I can finally give the proggie a proper workout.
HPClean: Thanks for the comments. I agree, a feature such as this would be a great idea at the OS level. Bob–the other developer I’m working with–has been scratching his head inbetween pulling it out while working on the Office CommandBars, trying to figure out if there’s a way to may a control that provides similar gestures so other developers easily can use them.
Darren: Right now, InkPlayer needs a little more work. Nudges help. Thanks for your interest.
This looks exactly as I had envisioned it when I thought of the same idea years ago. I’m glad someone with your talent has been able to bring it to life.
Trevor, it is fun, that’s for sure.
One of the trickiest parts has been with integrating into Office. Actually, it’s not that it’s hard, it’s just that it takes time to figure out what can be done and more importantly all the little details to accomplish things. Fortunately, Bob is doing much of this work and I can focus more on the gestures :-).