Summary

TSF supports a wide range of advanced text services including accessibility, speech, handwriting, keyboard input as well as proofing and reference services. These services are supported through a single API, which is device- and language-independent. TSF can be divided into three components: applications, text services, and the TSF manager, which acts as a communication mediator between an application and one or more text services.

Text services supply applications with context, which can significantly improve conversion accuracy. TSF also enables the text services to associate and store state and data with the document, which facilitates dynamic content, data sharing, seamless input behavior, deferred recognition, and intelligent correction. Moreover, TSF provides support for text services to be utilized simultaneously and enables the creation of a custom UI through the optional interfaces that it supplies.

TSF offers support for speech and handwriting recognition technologies, which the traditional Win32 API cannot readily address. TSF also bypasses the relative difficulty of using IMEs for East Asian languages as well as the modal, one-directional nature of the system input API. As a result, input rates for those working with East Asian languages are notably increased. Finally, TSF applications do not need to be aware of or write code for specific text services. Nor do applications need to be written for specific languages, since TSF is itself fully globalized.