1. An apparatus for manipulating and recognizing ink stroke representations in a computing system having an input device, a display device, a memory and a processing unit, the apparatus comprising: means for producing on a display device a plurality of parallel lines defining an area for inputting ink stroke representations; means for parsing ink stroke representations into drawings elements and writing elements, the means for parsing strokes, coupled to the processing unit and the input device, to receive ink stroke representations; and means for managing space between writing elements, the space management means modifying the amount of space between writing elements and modifying the display of writing elements in response to inputs from the input device.