TEXT RECOGNIZER AND METHOD USING NON-CUMULATIVE CHARACTER SCORING IN A FORWARD SEARCH

In a method of recognition of handwritten input, a preprocessing module (200) of a recognizer (203) having a recognition module (202), segments handwritten input into strokes, to provide stroke vectors. A search module (204) generates hypothetical character strings for scoring by the recognition module (202). A character hypothesis is generated which is a data set of a character, a start vector and an end vector. The recognizer (203) provides a non-cumulative score for the character hypothesis, where the score represents a likelihood of the character being present in the handwritten input at a position starting at the start vector and ending at the end vector. The recognizer (203) delivers to the search module a result that is either the score for the selected first character hypothesis or a result that allows the search module to temporarily ignore the hypothesis or to kill it altogether. The search module maintains or disregards the first hypothetical character string dependent on the result. The process is repeated for other character hypotheses and other hypothetical character strings.