This is a feature that really seems forgotten about in the customization of messenger. No patches, or addons, or programs like Plus! I know about really do anything with the handwritting.

So here are some ideas I've been popping around my head for about 2 days:

1. More colors. The current set of 16 just plain sucks. It has like 4 shades of each color, and the colors themselves aren't that great. What about giving us the option to use any color?

2. Ctrl+V pasting. If I have an image in paint, and copy it. Then I could paste it in the ink area. This would be great for "screenshot sending".

3. Shapes. Just like in paint. Not sure this is possible however .


I enjoy this feature, but it is deathly limited. Could anything be done with Plus! to liven this up ^___^?

Well, I havn't seen any recent up-to-date add-ons for the handwriting tool. There use to be an add-on that let you paste screenshots, but I think that was for MSNM 7.5 (or maybe lower) which you could get from mess.be (can't find it ATM).

As for the colours and shapes, the handwriting tool is made by Windows Journal Viewer 1.5, which I'm guessing, only has 16 colours and no shapes; therefore you would have to actually modify the whole program which you can't do.

there was an application made on these forums that you selected the colour you wanted and it made it in that colour, however as it wasn't intergrated it was very time consuming to do, so it is possible.


I was suggesting a script to do this if possible try and hook onto the bottom of the ink window with a multicolour button option.

as for screenshot sending it was a program caleld info pen pro, but it was very hard to get to work and cost money

1, 3. Not possible without significant changes in the Ink feature itself, since it's the Ink redistributable that allows you to use Handwriting in the first place. Ink comes with Windows Journal Viewer.
Think of Ink like an embeddable control, much like a button, a checkbox, or even IE (MP!L's Log Viewer and SPNG's dialogs are examples of an embedded IE control). To extend the functions of Ink, it'd need to expose methods of extension, which I doubt it does. The other option is changing Ink itself, and only MS can do that.

2. Ink is used for 'vector image'. Basically, it records lines and colours, not pixel data. A screenshot is a 'raster image', which contains pixel data instead of lines and colours. Converting a raster image to a vector image is an expensive operation that results is a ballooning filesize.
So it's pointless pasting a screenshot as an Ink message, sadly. However, it should be possible to create a Screenshot Sender-alike in script.