MS Ink Client

What is this?

This is a client for the MS Ink Server implemented as a shared library for GNU/Linux/Unix systems to provide a general system-level interface to translate handwriting to text.

The MS Ink Server must be installed and available for this to provide the service - this library's purpose is to allow any application or desktop control to make use of Handwriting Recognition via a common interface so we can develop a handwriting-aware desktop for GNU/Linux/Unix while we are waiting for someone to solve the recognition problem in Free Software.

Immediate ink recognition vs. Latent ink recognition

Immediate ink recognition translates writing strokes to text and discards the strokes. Several useful immediate recognition solutions are available now - Xstroke and CellWriter are two examples.

Latent ink recognition translates writing strokes to text on demand at any time after the strokes are made (and saved) - the handwriting is preserved. This allows using handwriting as a primary data format which can be saved and searched when desired.

Latent ink recognition capability allows the development of Tablet centric applications.

How to use it

The C source code that implements this library includes a test client which can be used to confirm the system is working. The source shows how an application can use the library for recognition services.

The compiled test client will be found here after installation.  The server must be running:

/usr/local/bin/msinkclienttest

How do I install this?

The source code is provided, and may be easily installed on GNU/Linux/Unix systems. A text file named 'msinkclient_source_install_howto' with instructions is provided in the source tarball.

You must have XML-RPC development files installed to satisfy dependencies.  On my Kubuntu system, this is provided by the package 'libxmlrpc-c3-dev'.

You must also have the Cmake build tool installed.

Also included in the source tarball is a configuration file which must be edited to point to the URL of your MS Ink Server installation.  This line must be changed to match your own set up, as determined during the MS Ink Server installation:

serviceURLValue = "http://192.168.41.128/TabletPC/MSInkService.rem"