DIGITAL INK-BASED SEARCH

Described is searching directly based on digital ink input to provide a result set of one or more items. Digital ink input (e.g., a handwritten character, sketched shape, gesture, drawing picture) is provided to a search engine and interpreted thereby, with a search result (or results) returned. Different kinds of digital ink can be used as search input without changing modes. The search engine includes a unified digital ink recognizer that recognizes digital ink as a character or another type of digital ink. When the recognition result is a character, the character may be used in a keyword search to find one or more corresponding non-character items, e.g., from a data store. When the recognition result is a non-character item, the non-character item is provided as the result, without keyword searching. The search result may appear as one or more item representations, such as in a user interface result panel.