Method and system for maintaining alternates in association with recognized words

Abstract

In a computing device that receives handwritten data, a method and system that maintains an association between alternates for a given ink word, regardless of the handwritten or text state of the word, and regardless of the position of the word as it may be edited in a document. Handwritten data is maintained in an ink word data structure, and once the word is recognized and an alternate is selected for it, the first character of the word remains as an ink word (in a text buffer) pointing to the data structure, with a flag set in the data structure indicating that the word is now recognized as text. In this state, the first character is displayed to the user as a recognized text letter instead of as the handwritten word. The other characters that make up the recognized word are inserted as text into the text buffer. Any alternates returned by the recognizer are thus stored with the ink word data structure displayed as this first character of a recognized word, which also maintains the ink data, e.g., the stroke information entered by a user or the like. Then, if the user edits the word, e.g., moves it, the alternates and also the ink data move with the word. Other alternatives for associating the alternates with the recognized text are also described.