Winforms app which must include some freehand drawing

Question

We have a customer who needs some simple forms (probably we would be creating a simple Winforms app for them) but there is a requirement to capture a mix of input fields plus some freehand drawing. It's the freehand drawing which worries us.

They will be using a tablet pc with stylus. The customer is running Office 2007.

This project needs to stay simple. We were thinking of embedding a OneNote element into our Winforms (is this even possible?).

I have to admit to not having used OneNote but have a vague idea that it's the "kind of thing that would do freehand capture", which is why I mention it here. The embedding is a priority since we don't want the UI to involve dropping out into something else. I think.

Or else some other free or low cost alternative. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I'd really recommend looking into Microsoft Ink. It works with Tablet PCs and it sounds like exactly what you want.

This is a decent getting-started tutorial that launches into code pretty quickly.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms811392.aspx

It also has awesome integration into WPF, so you might consider writing a WPF control to manage the Ink functionality, and then embed your WPF Ink component into a WinForm (if you want to still go the WinForms route).