Ink For Word add-in coming

Phil Crosby is working on a new add-in for Word that improves on how Word interacts with ink. Phil has created a video here and has a blog about the upcoming add-in here. I’m looking forward to testing this one out.

So why is Phil creating an Ink add-in for Word if it already supports ink? I’ll let Phil explain it:

Microsoft Word has considerable support for writing on documents, but it’s not perfect. Most noticable is the inability to reflow marks that are written in the body of a document. When the document is changed, the marks don’t move with the text, and quickly become irrelelvant.

Additionally, the ability to write comments in the margin of a page is limited to the right margin, and requires pushing buttons and writing in boxes. Ink for Word let’s you write all over the document whenever you want – there’s no buttons to push or boxes to write in. It groups your comments together and makes sure they move with the document as it changes.

Finally, Word does not interpret and apply Tablet PC gestures or proof-reading marks. This time consuming and tedious task is left up to the person editing the document.