Ink

Ink is a liquid or paste that contains pigments or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing or writing with a pen, brush, or quill. Thicker inks, in paste form, are used extensively in letterpress and lithographic printing.

Ink can be a complex medium, composed of solvents, pigments, dyes, resins, lubricants, solubilizers, surfactants, particulate matter, fluorescents, and other materials. The components of inks serve many purposes; the ink’s carrier, colorants, and other additives affect the flow and thickness of the ink and its appearance when dry.

Types

Ink formulas vary, but commonly involve two components:

Inks generally fall into four classes:

Colorants

Pigment inks are used more frequently than dyes because they are more color-fast, but they are also more expensive, less consistent in color, and have less of a color range than dyes.

Pigments

Pigments are solid, opaque particles suspended in ink to provide color. Pigment molecules typically link together in crystalline structures that are 0.1–2 µm in size and comprise 5–30 percent of the ink volume. Qualities such as hue, saturation, and lightness vary depending on the source and type of pigment.

Top Level Design

Top Level Design is a company based in Portland, Oregon, in the United States, and the domain name registry for the generic top-level domains (gTLD) .wiki, .ink and .design. Ray King serves as its chief executive officer (CEO).

History

Top Level Design (TLD) was founded in 2012 by Portland entrepreneur Ray King after he stepped down as CEO of AboutUs, a company he founded in 2006. King partnered with his brother-in-law and investor Peter Brual, who served as an advisor to AboutUs. TLD was created to become a domain name registry for multiple generic top-level domains (gTLD). In 2012, domain industry websites reported that the company had applied for ten gTLDs: .art, .blog, .design, .gay, .group, .ink, .llc, .photography, .style and .wiki. King later revealed that, because the company began as a family project, the gTLDs applied to by Top Level Design reflect both personal and business interests. Industry sources also confirmed that CentralNic would serve as TLD's backend registry provider and Iron Mountain Incorporated would provide escrow services. The company's applications were further confirmed by The Oregonian and Portland Business Journal in April 2013. In an interview published by The Oregonian, King expressed his hope that TLD would "help shape [the] new era" of top-level domains, saying they were "going to change the complexion of the Internet, at least the naming complexion of the Internet, quite a bit."

Inkwell (Macintosh)

Inkwell, or simply Ink, is the name of the handwriting recognition technology developed by Apple Inc. and built into the Mac OS X operating system. Introduced in an update to Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar", Inkwell can translate English, French, and German writing. The technology made its debut as "Rosetta", an integral feature of Apple Newton OS, the operating system of the short-lived Apple Newton personal digital assistant. Inkwell's inclusion in Mac OS X led many to believe Apple would be using this technology in a new PDA or other portable tablet computer. However, none of the touchscreen iOS devices--iPhone/iPod/iPad--offers Inkwell handwriting recognition.

Inkwell, when activated, appears as semi-transparent yellow lined paper, on which the user sees his or her writing appear. When the user stops writing, his or her writing is interpreted by Inkwell and pasted into the current application (wherever the active text cursor is), as if the user had simply typed the words. The user can also force Inkwell to not interpret his or her writing, instead using it to paste a hand-drawn sketch into the active window.