Skip to Content
Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition
book

Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition

by David Pogue
July 2005
Intermediate to advanced
866 pages
29h 18m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition

Ink: Handwriting Recognition

In the same way that your grandmother turned yesterday's dinner into today's sandwich (and tomorrow's soup), Apple recycled the handwriting technology of its failed Newton handheld and added it to Mac OS X. It's now called Ink, and it does exactly what it used to: turns your handwriting into "typed" text in any program.

You can't very well write directly on your Apple Cinema Display (although that would be cool). So Ink appears in Mac OS X only if you have a graphics tablet, one of those stylus-and-pad devices found generally only on the desks of graphic artists. (Wacom is the best-known tablet company, but there are a couple of others.)

Can Ink really replace the keyboard? Not for anything more than quick notes, that's

for sure. But it can be handy when you're Web surfing, sketching, filling in database forms, and so on.

Note

Why on earth did Apple go to all this software-writing trouble just to satisfy the tiny community of graphics-tablet owners? That's exactly what the GICPWBAMBDOPTC (Great Internet Confederacy of People Who Believe that Apple Must Be Developing a One-Piece Tablet Computer) wants to know.

Click the A button to input text; click the star button to make a drawing. Either way, after you're finished, click the Send button to have your text or art pasted into whatever document is open behind it. (Of course, you can't paste a graphic unless the program you're currently running accepts graphics.)

Figure 15-19. Click the A button to input text; click the star button to make a drawing. Either way, after you're finished, click the Send button to have your text or art pasted into whatever document is open behind it. (Of course, you can't paste a graphic ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

David Pogue
Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell

Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell

Andy Lester, Chris Stone, Chuck Toporek, Jason McIntosh

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596009410Errata Page