Abstract: In a handwriting recognition system a method for differentiating a first character from a second character having similar characteristics. The method includes the steps of determining during a training session at least one pairwise discriminant measure associated with the first character and with the second character. The step of determining includes a step of evaluating with a potential discriminant measure a plurality of prototype first characters and a plurality of prototype second characters. Subsequently, during a handwriting recognition session, the method evaluates with at least one of the previously determined discriminant measures selected from a set of same an input character identified as being either the first prototype character or the second prototype character.

Abstract: A character recognition system 10 includes a segmentation processor 12 which is coupled between an electronic tablet 14 and a character recognizer 18. The tablet 14 has an associated stylus or pen 15 with which a user forms symbols, such as block printing or script characters, on a surface of the tablet 14. The tablet 14 has x-axis and y-axis output signals expressive of the position of the pen 15 within an x-y tablet coordinate system. A stroke capture device 16 intercepts the x-y outputs from the tablet to generate x-y position pair data for the segmentation processor 12. An output of the segmentation processor 12 is data expressive of connected strokes and unconnected strokes which is input to the character recognizer 18.