Building Experiences With Direct Ink on Windows 10

Pen and Ink in Windows 10

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. That 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 and send it as a medium of communication.

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



The figure depicts how much the human form of inking is possible with Direct Ink.

Another example will be a Digitally Inked B'day card for a loved one as in the following:



Direct Ink in Windows 10

Direct Ink is a family of technologies. One of the most crucial features of Direct Ink is that it has the least latency. The software latency is minimized to ensure the user has a great experience on every device. The timing is, although, set to be 50ms to provide a real-time experience.

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

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

Pressure Recognition

All the inking that 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 much to offer. The Inking is of a Vector nature and hence has the capabilities of understanding where to put more emphasis on. Although it varies from device to device that 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 that has been implemented in the Direct Ink technology.

Implementing Inking on Windows 10

The InkCanvas Element

This is a Universal Control that can be utilized to make awesome experiences. So let's implement it using Visual Studio 2015.

The following are two main points:

1. Take care of the Z axis.
2. Make sure you make the background “transparent”.

Let's make it up in Visual Studio 2015.