Real Time Recognition of Handprinted Text: Program Documentation

The memorandum documents a computer program that permits an on-line computer user to print text naturally and have it recognized accurately. The program recognizes handprinted letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and geometric figures; it separates characters written in quick succession and in close proximity. The program is written as a re-entrant process in IBM-360 assembly language; it requires about thirty-seven hundred 32-bit words of storage. The user must provide programs that (1) communicate with an input device such as the RAND Tablet to supply a sequence of writing-instrument coordinates to the recognition program; (2) select options in real-time based on context; and (3) use the recognition program's outputs for displaying and editing information on a CRT display device. The documentation describes the program at two levels. The most general description lists the symbols recognized and discusses feature extraction, character separation, symbol recognition, and user options. The second level provides a computer listing of the assembly-language program. This listing includes descriptions of the logical functions, calling sequences, and input/output parameters of each of the major processes comprising the program, and outlines the information processing and flow of control. The Appendix briefly describes processes and macros that perform functions required by the recognition program.