Historical perspectives of handwriting recognition systems

The automatic recognition of handwriting has been under investigation since the 1950´s when applications for the relatively new digital computer technology became of interest. Since then there has been steady research effort into the automatic processing and recognition of handwriting. The general categories into which the processing of handwriting can be divided are presented. Encouraging progress has been reported in the automatic recognition of mathematical formulae, printed characters, cursive script and signature verification, and there has been a limited amount of research into applying automatic image processing to personal identification and document authentication through writer identification or the detection of disguised or forged handwriting. In addition to the recognition of Roman scripts and symbols there has been intensive work into the recognition of Chinese, Japanese, and other handwritten scripts. Other applications of handwriting recognition are possible for editing, annotating and other highly interactive activities which require pointing and annotation