OS X El Capitan: The Missing Manual

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 OS X. It’s now called Ink, and it does exactly what it used to: turn your handwriting into “typed” text in any program. Can Ink 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.

Ink appears in 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.) You could count on one hand the number of people with Wacom tablets who use them for handwriting input. And so, to avoid sacrificing any more old-growth trees to this book than absolutely necessary, the how-to for Ink is available as a free downloadable PDF appendix to this chapter. You’ll find it on this book’s “Missing CD” page at www.missingmanuals.com.