CONTACT CHARACTER SEPARATING SYSTEM

PURPOSE:To distinguish accurately a single character and a contact character even in a contact character described with a character width and pitch other than designation by using the result of character recognition of a character pattern before separation for the discrimination of the contact character or the single chracter and separating the character pattern in the unit of one character from the contact character pattern. CONSTITUTION:One character pattern is segmented from a pattern of a storage circuit 6 and in case of a contact character, the entire contact character pattern is segmented as one character pattern, the segmented pattern and a standard pattern of a dictionary file 8 are compared and when they are coincident, it is taken readable and when dissident, it is taken illegible. Then the character pattern width W and the character description pitch P are compared with the relation of W>=KP and when the result of recognition of the character pattern before separation is an illegible character, it is taken as the contact character and the character pattern discriminated as the contact character is divided into two as head one character pattern and preceding pattern. The division is executed by detecting a cut point CP between XX-XE and when the cut point CP is detected, the character pattern is divided into two at the cut point CP. When the processing of the character pattern to be recognized is finished, the processing is discriminated as the end.