Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Krishnan Menon

Reed L Townsend

Xiao Tu

Olumuyiwa M Durojaiye

Todd A Torset

Uros Batricevic

Connor Lawrence Weins

Joyce Wu

Fei Xiong

Mariel Young

Vipul Aneja

Stephen Harry Wright

Lawrence William Osterman

Hirofumi Yamamoto

Nicolas J Brun

Jacob Rossi

David Walker Duhon

Raju Ramanathan

Peter Freiling

Patrick Jee-An Poon

Alan Stephenson

Lindsay Ann Kubasik

Yibo Sun

Nathan P Pollock

Pak Kiu Chung

Sung Hong

Peter Benjamin Freiling

Embodiments relate to a computing device having storage, a processor, a display, a first human input device, and a second human input device, where the first human input device is in a first category of human input devices and the second human input device is in a second category of human input devices. The computing device may perform a process involving executing a windowing environment that manages windows of applications executing on the computing device. The windowing environment may receive raw inputs from the first and second human input devices and in turn generate input pointers for the raw inputs, respectively. The input pointers may be or include instances of an input pointer class implemented by the windowing environment, the pointer class used by the windowing environment for arbitrary different types of human input pointer devices including the first human input device and the second human input device.

Pointer unification

User interface (UI) manipulations may be performed by eliminating noticeable process boundaries associated with or generated by different applications. The techniques herein describe dynamically splitting manipulations across multiple pieces of content without regard to various types and/or states of the user interface manipulations and/or without regard to whether the multiple pieces of content are associated with different individual processes. In at least one example, the techniques described herein enable quick, responsive, and seamless UI manipulations with complex configurations of content on a UI and/or with multiple pieces of content associated with more than one application. Additionally, the techniques described herein further enable content on a UI to 'stick' to the user input manipulation or move with the user input manipulation such that the content appears to stay directly in contact with the user input manipulation.

Computerized dynamic splitting of interaction across multiple content

A platform-level container configured to hold natively-supported ink stroke data structures is maintained. The platform-level container is accessible to a plurality of different applications. An ink stroke visual corresponding to each ink stroke data structure held by the platform-level container is rendered via a display. An ink stroke change event corresponding to an ink stroke data structure held by the platform-level container is recognized. The ink stroke data structure is changed to an updated ink stroke data structure in accordance with the ink stroke change event. An ink stroke visual corresponding to the updated ink stroke data structure is rendered via the display without re-rendering ink stroke visuals corresponding to unchanged ink stroke data structures.

Ink stroke editing and manipulation

A facility for processing ink input is described. In one example facility, the facility receives ink input from an input device. The facility generates and renders ink stroke data structures in response to received ink input in accordance with an ink input processing pipeline. The facility provides to an executing application access to information traversing the ink input processing pipeline at a selected point in the ink input processing pipeline.

Processing digital ink input subject to monitoring and intervention by an application program

Systems and methods are provided for improving the latency for display of ink during user creation of ink content with a stylus, mouse, finger (or other touch input), or other drawing device for tracing a desired location for ink content in a display area. In order to reduce or minimize the time for display of ink content created by a user using a stylus/mouse/touch input/other device, a separate ink rendering process thread can be used that operates within the operating system and in parallel to other application threads. When it is desired to create ink content within an application, user interactions corresponding to creation of ink content can be handled by the separate ink rendering process thread. This can avoid potential delays in displaying ink content due to an application handling other events in a process flow.

Low latency ink rendering pipeline

In one embodiment, a unified pointer messagemay describe in a single type of pointer message a coordinate input from a user via multiple types of pointer devices. An input device interfacemay receive a coordinate inputfrom an input device. A processormay execute an application programming interface layerthat creates a unified pointer messagefor the coordinate input. The processormay send the unified pointer messageto an application. The processormay process a device specific data setunhandled by the application.

Device specific data in a unified pointer message

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Krishnan Menon