Patent ID: 7564995

Claim:
A system for managing ink information in a computer system having a pen-based input tablet, the system comprising: a pen driver coupled to the pen-based input/display tablet and configured to collect and organize the ink information entered at the pen-based input tablet into ink strokes; an ink memory area organized into one or more ink phrase data structures; and an ink manager coupled to the pen driver for receiving the ink strokes, the ink manager having an ink phrase termination engine configured to examine the ink information collected by the pen driver and, upon detecting the occurrence of an ink phrase termination event, to identify a respective end of an ink phrase to the ink manager; whereby the ink information entered at the pen-based input tablet is associated with a client application; and the ink manager stores the ink strokes received prior to the ink phrase termination event in a selected ink phrase data structure and, in response to receiving from the client application a reference context affiliated with the un-recognized ink strokes of the ink phrase, associates the reference context with the ink strokes, wherein where the ink manager associates the reference context with the un-recognized ink strokes by appending the reference context to the selected ink phrase data structure.