InkKit™ is a sketch toolkit designed to support diagramming across a wide range of domains. It runs on a Tablet PC. It consists of an excellent user interface and a customizable recognition engine. The user interface has two main views: sketch pages and portfolios. On a sketch page the user can draw and write much as they would on a piece of paper, yet supported by usual computer editing functionality. The portfolio is a place where a collection of sketches is displayed and links can be used to establish relationships between sketches.
The power of InkKit™ is its recognition engine. Advanced recognition techniques mean that users can draw and write on a page without having to change modes. Recognition of a particular type of diagram is achieved by creating a diagram domain and providing a few hand-drawn examples of the different types of diagrams components. Software add-ins can be written to convert the recognized sketch to another format or support intelligent interaction with the sketch. The sketches on this page show user interface designs that have been converted into both HTML and Java. We have created a number of other examples, converting diagrams into program code, pictures and Microsoft Word drawing objects.
Two recent InkKit publications are
Plimmer, B. and I. Freeman (2007). A Toolkit Approach to Sketched Diagram Recognition. HCI, Lancaster, UK, 205-213.
Schmieder, P., B. Plimmer, et al. (2008). Cross-Domain Diagram Sketch Recognition. Sketch Tools for Diagrams. Germany
An install for InkKit is available here InkKit is a research tool and is free for non-commercial use. Source code may be available to other researchers, please email. If you have problems we will try to help, please email.
