InPad Fundamentals
Resolving Conflicts
Best Practice
Default Latin Layout
Default Numeric Layout
InPad Fundamentals
InPad is handwriting input utility intended for easy user customization, text input speed up and better recognition.
The core idea of the technology is radical reduction of sensitive/detectable areas and tracing sequences of activated
areas. That approach provides recognition of almost any notation.
InPad input area is a region subdivided into several cells as shown on the picture:
InPad may have 2x3, 2x2 or 3x3 cells layout depending on current layout.
Each cell is activated when pen touches it.
InPad collects a sequence of cells crossed while a pen or a finger is drawing a stroke.
After cell sequence is collected InPad engine searches its value in the current dictionary
of strokes called layout.
You can assign one or many symbols, string or global function to each sequence of cells.
Global functions include copy, cut, paste, undo, backspace, caps lock, some InPad
specific functions and application shortcuts.
 
Example. Let us enumerate cells in a 2x3 pad as shown on the above.
Then drawing a figure starting in cell 5: [5-2-3-6-5-6]: gives letter 'a' (see picture to the right),
and figure [1-2-3] (release pen) [1-4-5-2]: gives letter 'p' (see picture to the left).
Note, that any letter, digit, punctuation symbol, arithmetic sign or currency symbol can
be written in rather intuitive way.
For any alphabet based on latin letters 2x3 pad is quit enough to write down all
letters without conflicts (see latin letters table
for example). For complex alphabets like Thai 3x3 pad may be used.
A 2x2 pad is enough for simple gesture input.
You can draw a single symbol in various ways.
For instance, letter 'b' in the default layout provided with
InPad distribution package can be drawn:
- any other way you define it
Strokes and their values are stored in the special dictionaries of strokes called 'layouts'.
InPad has default layouts for different languages and symbol sets. For example, Numeric layout
contains strokes for digits and numerical operations, Latin layout contains letters of Latin alphabet.
The last layout can be used for entering text in English or (after adding strokes for specific
accented letters) for any language based on Latin alphabet. Layouts for other alphabets as
well as layouts with specific accents for more then 100 world anguages can be downloaded from
InPad website: http://www.inpad.net/layouts. You
may activate and use similtaneously as many layouts as you need.
Global Commands
As it was mentioned above, InPad supports a number of global commands. Strokes for them are
stored in the Global layout, which is always present in the list of active layouts.
The table above contains default strokes for most useful global commands
(click on the picture to enlarge it).
Of course, you can assign your own strokes to these commands.
Resolving Conflicts
Although we can write all characters without conflicts, there can be situations
when you might want to use single stroke for several characters. For example, it is
hard to distinguish strokes for dot ('.') and comma (','). Of cause, we can invent some
different strokes for them, but it would be much easier to have a single stroke:
 for both of these characters and a special
command stroke 'Next Alternative':
drawing which will switch between these values.
The same approach is very useful when writing accented letters. For example, you can
use the same stroke  for writing both latin
capital letter 'U' and capital 'U' with diaeresis: 'Ü' and switch between these values
with 'Next Alternative' command.
So, to write 'U' use single stroke, and
to write 'Ü' draw:
+ .
You also could use regular accents to write accented letters. Just draw accent strokes
after a letter. For example, you can get accented forms of "a" using the following accent
strokes after your draw the letter "a":
Please refer to demo for your language layout.
Best Practice
While working with InPad please keep in mind that InPad recognizes not strokes itself,
but sequences of cells intersected by strokes.
It means, for example, that both strokes  and
 are completely equivalent for InPad recognition
engine, but strokes and
 are quite different (because give different
cell chains [1-2-3] and [4-5-6]).
So do not write in a single cell. Try not to cross cells center corners as this might
lead to ambiguous situations such as shown here: 
when it is not clear which sequence will be executed ([2-3-6-5] or [2-3-2-5]).
The following drawing is better:  .
Alternatively you can assign equal values to both of these chains.
See Also:
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