Choosing Which Formats to Support

The type of application you create dictates which ink persistence format to support.

Single Ink Object Applications

Applications whose documents contain only ink should use ink serialized format (ISF). They should be able to copy and paste Ink Serialized Format (ISF). An example of this is an application for drawing or annotation. These applications can use the ClipboardCopy, and ClipboardPaste methods.

Complex Applications

Applications whose documents contain other content, such as text, should copy HTML with fortified Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) files, in addition to ISF. The HTML itself must be generated by the application, though the Tablet PC application programming interfaces (APIs) generate GIF files. These applications should also be able to copy and paste ISF for interoperability with the applications described above.

RTF

An application should be able to produce Rich Text Format (RTF) if interoperability with Microsoft® Word 2002 or other legacy applications is required.

MIME Support

The following table lists the suggested Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) headers and file extensions for ink that is persisted to files using the ISF or GIF.