Batch mode and incremental mode refer to the way you deliver your strokes to the recognition engine.
Incremental mode means your application captures and sends ink strokes to the MyScript iink engine along the way users write. Thus, MyScript iink SDK starts interpreting the digital ink as soon as users produce it.
MyScript iink SDK analyzes the new strokes to interpret them but also to refine previous recognition results. So this recognition process is incremental.
Recognition occurs while people write. So, once they have finished, full recognition results are almost immediately available.
When combining incremental mode with on screen usage, users can see and fix interpretation issues as they write. They can also enjoy gestures, thus experiencing full interactivity.
Sometimes, you need to wait until the user has finished writing to send ink strokes to the engine and get a result. So, you buffer the strokes before sending them to the engine: batch mode lets you send all strokes at once.
Such a mode takes only advantage of the interpretation part of MyScript technology. Export can retrieve this semantics in either common digital formats or the most-complete MyScript internal format. Furthermore, for now, batch mode does not support any gesture.
You can experiment with batch mode, its performance and its limitations in this demo:
Incremental and batch modes can co-exist in your application with MyScript iink SDK, as they are complementary. A typical use case for mixing both modes is indexing.
Imagine you want to index for searching your notes. You will likely send strokes as a batch for all non-indexed pages but the current one, where you will send the strokes in real time. This will allow you to have current page content available for immediate search.
Besides UX limits, no ink nor decoration gestures are currently available in batch mode. MyScript iink technology does not give immediate access to all the potential recognition candidates. So it tends to make the usage along with content control process difficult.
Still, you can start today with your existing application and use only batch mode. And in a second step, you can decide to move to incremental mode. The API is the same and produces a single type of content compatible with all input modes. So, switching from one mode to another will be a functional decision and not a technical one.