Lonestar, Longhorn Editions of Tablet OS To Advance Ink, Handwriting

At its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft executives tipped off developers to the planned release of the Lonestar edition in mid-2004 and the forthcoming releases of the Tablet PC Platform Software Development Kit 1.7, due in the second quarter of 2004.

Sources close to the company said the Lonestar edition will support instant messaging and collaboration features.

Microsoft claims the Lonestar and Longhorn editions--as well as the new Tablet PC support in Office 2003 and 10 new tablet devices due to be delivered at Comdex--will jump-start tablet computing into a more mainstream market, executives said at PDC 2003.

The SDK and Lonestar edition will give Tablet PC developers new ways to put ink controls on Web pages and do context tagging of handwritten data, company executives noted.

However, Microsoft executives made clear the next major upgrade--due in the Longhorn Windows time frame--will open up a new wave of value-added possibilities exploiting the next generation Windows' Avalon presentation services and advanced inking and customization capabilities.

"Avalon support for pen and ink is important because you can build powerful UIs," said David Jones, lead program manager of Tablet PCs at Microsoft, noting that the tablet version of Windows will have a "first class" WinFX API that will give developers access to the Avalon presentation services in Longhorn Windows.

Support for Avalon Canvas, for example, will allow pen and ink input data to be incorporated in future Windows XAML-based applications and forms such as expense reports, Jones told about 100 developers during a session at PDC.

The Longhorn version of Tablet PC will also offer advanced recognition capabilities such as the difference between handwritten data and drawings and the ability to integrate cursive and block letters on one sentence or context.

It will also differentiate between paragraphs, lists, lines and words, shapes and lists and better anchor ink annotations to text.

Explicit personalization capabilities will "do a better job" of identifying one individual's handwriting over another's, while a planned "harvesting" feature will enable customers--and their solution providers--to build personalized dictionaries based on day-to-day input entered into the portable device.

The software will also be "smarter" about recognizing angled writing and will be better able to handle input created with different pressure and tilt levels. The Longhorn version, moreover, will feature smart searching of free-form ink and handwritten data as well as smarter ink editing and realtime ink analysis, Jones said.

Users will be able to access better ink, erase and select options for moving, resizing and rotating their data, he added.

While the future Tablet PC OS will offer revolutionary features for handling input devices, executives noted that the release of the Lonestar edition next year and, more signififcantly, the SDK will give developers and solution providers better ways of adding value to their applications.

Executives would not provide details about Lonestar. However, Microsoft told CRN at the Windows XP Tablet PC launch last November that new instant mesaging and collaboration features were being readied for version 2.0.

Earlier this month, Microsoft debuted new Tablet PC support in Office 2003.

The SDK, which moves into alpha testing next month and beta in the first quarter of 2004, offers a realtime stylus API and new tools for putting ink controls on Web pages and putting context tags on handwritten data. The SDK also offers .Net to "No Touch" deployment support and deeper access into the subsystem that handles ink.

One developer for a major European wireless services said he enjoyed hearing about the long-term direction but he would have liked more information about an autoconnect feature in Longhorn Windows that will automatically connect Windows users to available wireless networks.

Microsoft recently added support for languages other than English, but the uptick of Tablet PC sales across the pond has been very limited, that developer added. "It'll take more time," said Waldemar Ciesielski, a developer in the Mobile Business Solutions at T Mobile, Bonn, Germany. "It will come, but it'll take a few years."