2. Using the
Writing Pad and Touch Keyboard
When you use a PC without
a keyboard, how do you enter text into dialog boxes, web forms, your
browser's address bar, or a document? For those tasks, use the Tablet PC
Input Panel. (Don't
be fooled by the name, which is a carryover from its roots in older
Windows versions; this feature works on touch-enabled PCs as well as
Tablet PCs.) The Input
Panel is a relatively small box that appears on demand. Using small
buttons in the upper left corner of the Input Panel, you can switch
between its two views. Use the writing pad to edit existing text or to enter handwritten
characters that are converted on the fly and inserted as if you had
typed them; use the touch keyboard
(shown in Figure 1) to enter text and keyboard
commands directly.
Normally, the Input Panel
is completely hidden. If you tap the display with a finger or a pen, a
few pixels of the Input Panel's right edge become visible on the left
side of the screen. To open the Input Panel, tap this small edge to
expose a larger portion of the Input Panel and then tap to open the
Input Panel in the center of the screen.
The Input Panel also offers to appear when it's needed
for specific text-entry tasks. Tap to position the insertion point in
the Start menu search box, a dialog box, a form, a document, or any
place where you would normally use the keyboard to enter text. Tap with a
finger or allow the pen point to hover for a second until the Input
Panel icon appears. Then tap the icon to open a floating Input Panel.
Note:
If you used a Tablet PC
with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, you might remember the Input Panel
gesture. This gesture (a side-to-side slashing motion akin to the mark
of Zorro) is disabled by default in Windows 7, as it was in Windows
Vista. To re-enable it, open the Pen And Touch dialog box, choose Start Tablet PC Input
Panel from the Pen Actions list on the Pen Options tab, and click
Settings. Select Enable Start Input Panel Gesture, and click or tap OK
to save the new setting. You'll find a slew of other ways to customize
the behavior of the Input Panel in the Options dialog box, available
from the Tools menu at the top of the Input Panel.
Under some
circumstances, you might prefer to dock the Input Panel. This option is
useful when you expect to enter a few characters at a time in several
locations within a document you're editing and you don't want to
continually make the Input Panel visible. To switch between floating and
docked modes, tap the Tools menu above the Input Panel and then choose
Dock At Top Of Screen or Dock At Bottom Of Screen.
The two buttons in the top
left corner of the Input Panel allow you to switch between the touch
keyboard and the writing pad. The writing pad offers a
blank surface for editing existing text or entering free-form text. The
example in Figure
2 shows the writing
pad after selecting a misspelled word from a Microsoft Office Word
document.
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When you use a Tablet
PC pen to scribble a handwritten note or sketch a figure within a
pen-aware application, you create a type of data called ink. Although it
superficially resembles a simple bitmap, ink-based data contains a
wealth of information in addition to the simple shape. Windows records
the direction, pressure, speed, and location of the tablet pen as it
moves and stores the resulting marks as a compressed graphic. If you
enlarge a piece of data that was stored as ink, Windows uses this stored
data to ensure that it keeps its proper shape.
By recognizing
the combinations of strokes that represent handwritten letters, the
operating system can convert even bad handwriting into text, with
surprising accuracy. You don't have to convert ink into text to get the
benefits of handwriting recognition, either. The handwriting recognizer
automatically converts handwriting to text in the background, storing
the resulting text along with the ink and adding the recognized words
and phrases to the Windows Search index.
Applications that fully
support ink as a data type are relatively rare, but you can perform some
remarkable feats with those that do exist. Using Microsoft Office Word
2007 or later, for instance, you can insert handwritten comments and
annotations into a document. Another member of the Office family, OneNote, goes
even farther, building an index of your handwritten notes and allowing
you to search through an entire collection for a word or phrase.
Although you need a
stylus to create ink on a Tablet PC, anyone who uses any edition of
Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows
Server 2008 can view ink-based data.
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When you enter
handwritten text in the writing pad, it is converted to text on the fly but remains in
the entry window. To erase text you've entered here, use the scratch-out
gesture, a quick left-and-right slashing motion. Make sure that your
pen stays on the screen as you make the gesture, directly on the text
you want to erase, and keep the lines horizontal; if you're
unsuccessful, you might need to draw more or longer lines. The text does
not appear at the insertion point until you tap Insert.
To edit a selection of
text using a pen or touch input, open the writing pad and
tap the selection. This action breaks the selected text into individual
slots for each letter or number, as shown in Figure 3.
In this editing mode, the writing pad supports four editing gestures:
correcting, deleting, splitting, and joining. The button in the upper
right corner of the writing
pad (to the left of the Close button) allows you to show or hide a
strip of help buttons, each of which displays a small animation that
illustrates the selected gesture.
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The touch keyboard is available on the Welcome screen, allowing you
to log on to your account by entering your password. To toggle its
display, click the icon in the lower left corner of the Welcome screen.
Using the touch keyboard presents some potential security issues: you
don't want a casual bystander or a deliberate snoop to look over your
shoulder and watch each character of your password flash as you enter
it. To adjust the behavior of the touch keyboard for logons, open the
Options dialog box, click the Advanced tab, and use the slider to choose
a higher or lower degree of security. The available help text does a
concise job of explaining what each option does.
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