Character segmentation technique with integrated word search for handwriting recognition

摘要

After each complete stroke in a handwriting recognition process, a hypothesis is generated whether a word break is present between the previous stroke and the new stroke. This hypothesis is weighted with a probability of a word-break occurring between the strokes. This probability is determined from the geometrical relationships between characters. Subsequently, a word search is carried out on the basis of these weighted hypotheses, to identity the most likely candidates for the words represented by the written strokes. A user interface is provided that offers the user a limited list of alternative word recognitions for a group of characters. These recognitions undergo segmentation filtering, in accordance with the word breaks of the selected hypotheses, to present the user with only those alternatives having the same groupings of strokes.