This post refers to an application that I developed quite a while ago
and have just come back to recently. The application is a Java
application, and when the mouse is over a JTextField component, the
icon used to open the input panel does not appear. This is due to the
fact that Swing does its own components, and doesn't use the operating
system's components, so the OS is not aware that the mouse is over a
text component.

I had previously gotten around this by writing a C# server app that my
Java app communicates with via a local socket. In this C# app I had
added a reference to TabTip.exe and manually manipulated the input
panel when the user performed an action in the Java application that I
knew might require the input panel.

I've now moved to a different development machine, and downloaded the
TabletPC SDK version 1.7. I can't find any reference to TabTip.exe in
this version of the SDK. I believe that the functionality of
TabTip.exe was replaced by the floating icon in Tablet PC OS 2005
(installed as part of Windows XP SP 2). I'd like to be able to use
the improved functionality of the 2005 version of the input panel, but
don't know how to manipulate it programmatically.

I've found a few articles via Google that talk about manipulating the
input panel from a program, but these require Vista support. Moving
to Vista isn't an option for me right now. So my questions are:

1. Is it possible to make the input panel (or at least the floating
icon) appear from within a C# app using version 1.7 of the Tablet PC
SDK? If so, can someone point me to articles or postings describing
how to do it?

2. If it's not possible, can someone point me to instructions on
finding tabtip.exe in version 1.5 of the Tablet PC SDK? I can't for
the life of me remember how I did this before :-)

I'm also open to any other suggestions that people have for making the
integration of the tablet and Java applications work better - although
I'm not optimistic, since I asked this question of a member of the TPC
development team once and he acknowledged that it would be a problem.

Thanks,
Ryan

As a follow up, I remembered that I did all my development on a tablet
PC, and I was able to find tabtip.exe in the Program Files\Common Files
\Microsoft Shared\Ink directory, which didn't exist on my desktop,
even when the SDK is installed. So I can continue to develop on the
tablet if necessary if there's no way to do it on the desktop.

So this answers my second question, but my first question remains.

Ryan