Patent ID: 7444021

Claim:
A method of identifying a string formed from a number of hand-written characters, the method including steps of: a) Determining character probabilities for each character in the string, each character probability representing the likelihood of the respective character being a respective one of a number of predetermined characters; b) Determining template probabilities for the string, each template probability representing the likelihood of the string corresponding to a respective one of a number of templates, each template representing a respective combination of character types, wherein the step of determining the template probabilities for the string includes: (b)(i) Determining the number of characters in the string; (b)(ii) Selecting templates having an identical number of characters; and (b)(iii) Obtaining a template probability for each selected template; c) Determining string probabilities in accordance with the determined character and template probabilities; and, d) Identifying the character string in accordance with the determined string probabilities.