Re: Using Inkwell
Re: Using Inkwell
- Subject: Re: Using Inkwell
- From: Jim Witte <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 22:56:29 -0500
But what if I wanted to bring a non-tablet device (but still pen
based) to MacOSX. How can I get the system to enable InkWell when that
device is installed.
What if I wanted to add my own custom gestures to the system for use
in my own application? How would I do that?
There must be an API (and documentation) for doing these things.
I'd say that would be a matter of writing an appropriate driver for
the device that looks like a tablet to the OS. But my wish for an API
is the idea that the power of Inkwell is more likely to be used by
developers to it's full extent if there's a full API - in ways that
Apple may not even realize yet.
An example: I have an application that let's people enter their
names (first, last, middle initial), their phone number, date of birth,
and then scribble a signature and maybe draw a little "login logo" - a
flower pot, a sketched cat, whatever.. A checkbox would let you change
the middle name field from an intial to a full name. Here's an outline
of how I'd do it in NewtonScript:
firstLineView:{
_proto: protoInputLine,
'viewFlags: vClickable + vStrokesAllowed + vGuesturesAllowed +
vCharsAllowed + vNameField}
middleNameView and lastNameView follow definitions for firstLineView
middleNameCheck:{
_proto: protoCheckBox,
viewChangedScript: func(s) {
// change the strokeDone script for middleNameView and it's viewFlags
to allow/disallow words and names
}
phoneNumberView:{
'viewFlags: vClickable+vPhoneField}
loginLogoView:{
_proto: clView
viewFlags: vClickable+vStrokesAllowed+vShapesAllowed}
The middleNameView would have a StrokeDone script that would
interpret one character, and if it's a character (not a word), then put
it in there and mark the view as non-clickable via viewFlags. Or a
custom dictionary attached to the viewFlags might be more efficient.
the loginLogoView would have a StrokeDone script that would take the
stoke and stick it in a piece of digital ink instead of trying to
interpret it (I haven't poked around in ViewFrame or the Apple demos
enough to know exactly how to do that)
Can I eve *get* the basic stroke coorinate information out of InkWell
(as with a StrokeDone script and repeated calls to GetPoint in NS)?
What If I want to implement something based on Inkwell that has little
to do with character recognition mainly, but could benefit from a lot
of the algorithms that go into InkWell, like a drafting program, that
could use InkWell's shape-recognition ability (I'm assuming that's
still in the code..), or look at individual strokes to identify whether
they are close to already established "waypoints" on a blueprint?
Without an API, I might well be forced to reinvent the wheel.
Jim
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