Patent ID: 6970877

Claim:
A method of reducing a prototype database for use with a handwriting recognizer comprising the steps of: (a) providing the prototype database with at least two spaces that subdivide the prototype database according to strokes per character such that prototypes in different spaces of the at least two spaces have different numbers of strokes per character; (b) selecting at least two prototypes from the prototype database, wherein the selected prototypes are from at least two spaces; (c) determining how removal of each selected prototype would affect an error rate when a tuning set is processed by the handwriting recognizer by determining how many tuning samples, which would otherwise be correctly recognized, will be misrecognized as a result of removing each selected prototype and by determining how many tuning samples, which would otherwise be misrecognized, will be correctly recognized as a result of removing each selected prototype; and (d) removing from the prototype database at least one of the selected prototypes that has the least adverse effect on error rate.