CHARACTER RECOGNIZING METHOD

PURPOSE:To separately segment two characters even when two characters are recognized as one character in the case of separating characters processed at a half angle. CONSTITUTION:In a step ST1, a character string being an object is extracted. In a steep ST2, one character is separated/recognized from the character string. In a step ST3, the characters are merged in the heightwise direction and in a step ST4, the characters are similarly merged in the breadthwise direction. Among these merged characters, any characters satisfying the conditions are found out and recognized by search processing in a step ST5. In a step ST6, which one is a figure is discribed. When both of them are not figures, in a step ST7, those characters are defined as one character. When either one of the step ST6 is discribed as a figure, two characters are merged as one character in a step ST9. In a step ST10, the characters recognized as one character in the step ST9 are outputted as two characters.