Eric Mack, a well known productivity guru, picked up on my post on business applications that should be ink-enabled for Tablet PC support.

Not only is Eric a productivity guru, he lives and breathes Lotus Notes. He also knows the productivity benefits that a Tablet PC can bring to a person and a company. In a comment to my post and on his blog, he said that Lotus Notes, Acrobat, and IBM Sametime should be ink-enabled. Well, Eric received a comment from one of his readers asking "why should any application be ink-enabled".

Here is the reader's question:

Why should any application be ink-enabled

Seriously. Why?
The way Microsoft have approached the Tablet PC is all wrong in this regard: ink-enabling should be an OS-level abstraction. Applications should just take advantage of what the host operating system offers, using its input managers and what-have-you. It seems crazy to me that the OS vendor is relying on application developers to push *their* technology in this way.
I'm sure MS have their reasons for tackling the Table PC like this, but I must be missing something big time...

And this is where it gets real good. Eric posted a blog entry in response to the question and it is a fabulous argument on why any application should be ink-enabled. I highly encourage you to read the article, and post a comment here or at his blog suggestion other reasons why an application should be ink-enabled.

Developers and software companies: are you listening?