CHARACTER SEGMENTATION USING PATTERN MEASUREMENTS, ERROR RESCAN AND ADAPTIVE FONT DETERMINATION

摘要

Several types of input pattern measurements are gated together to determine the point at which adjacent characters will be separated by a segmentation signal. One type of pattern is effective to segment the characters unless an inhibitory pattern has also been received. The second pattern type will segment the characters only after an initializing pattern has been received, but only if an inhibitory pattern has not been received. A third type of pattern is effective for segmentation only after the receipt of both an inhibitory pattern and a subsequent enabling pattern. The enabling pattern may also remove the effect of the inhibitory pattern upon some or all of the first two pattern types. When the pattern size exceeds a preset maximum width without having been segmented, all three pattern types are inhibited, the pattern is rescanned and segmented with a blank scan, and a forced segmentation is produced at predetermined points within the pattern. The pattern types for both segmentation and recognition purposes may be selected from a number of pattern subsets, each subset being identified with a character set in a particular font. The characters on a document are initially scanned using a general measurement set. The number of measurements belonging to a particular subset are then counted until a predetermined number of them has appeared. At this point, the measurement switch from the general set to the subset identified as the font which is being read.