Building Direct Ink Experiences on Windows10

Pen and Ink in Windows 10

What is Pen and Ink?
Windows 10 brings in the most humanly form of Communication. The way this happens is by taking in the goodness of Inking as a form of communication with people inside an application.

Power of Digital Ink

 

This clearly means that the Ink can be sent as an Ink which means we can simply send this ink to anyone exactly as is. Any form of Metadata can be added for example search, wherein people can search with the Inking itself.Also, we can simply use the Ink and convert that into text or shapes then send it across as a medium of communication.

Here are two examples of Inking and then saving it in Word 2013 and  Then taken up in word 2007 to check the file consistency. Which is truly amazing and awesome.

 Figure depicts how much human form of inking is possible with Direct Ink

 

Another Example will be a Digitally Inked B’day card for a loved one

Direct Ink in Windows 10

Direct Ink is a family of technologies. The one of the most crucial feature of Direct Ink is it has the least latency. The software latency is minimized to make sure the user has a great experience on every device. The timing is although set to be 50ms to give a realtime experience.

This whole technology leverages the Direct X GPU. The Direct Ink keeps the responsiveness of the user thread alive while the whole workload is being taken by the GPU beneath the Ink canvas.

The whole idea of Inking is not this simple there are some comprehensive features which has made the Input and User Experience more fluid.

Pressure Recognition
 All the inking which is being done is to enable a more human interaction and connect the digital world with the traditional Pen and Paper world. The emphasis on words is very important and hence the Direct Ink has so much to offer. The Inking is of a Vector nature and hence has the capabilities of understanding where to put more emphasis on and although it varies from device to device the pressure recognition adds more life to what has been written.
The vector nature allows zooming into without distorting the image of the Inking.

Palm Recognition
Most of us drag our palm while we write something. The ability to detect the palm and exclude the palm from the actual inking is one of the crucial factors which has been implemented in the Direct Ink technology.

Implementing Inking on Windows 10

 

The InkCanvas Element
This is a Universal Control which can be utilized to make awesome experiences. So lets implement it on vs2015
Two main points
1.Take care of the Z axis
2.Make sure you make the background “transparent”


Lets make it up to Visual Studio 2015