Patent ID: 7336827

Claim:
A process for determining a most likely combination of characters, comprising the steps of: a) obtaining character data which includes information indicative of at least one handwritten character, the character data including at least one set of segmentation points for the at least one handwritten character; and b) providing a score for each particular character of a set of previously stored characters based on a comparison between the character data and the respective stored particular character, wherein the at least one handwritten character includes a plurality of handwritten characters, wherein a first character of the handwritten characters is connected to a second character of the handwritten characters via a transition, and further comprising the steps of: aa) determining a further score of the transition based on a difference in length of the first character and the second character, wherein step (aa) is determined based on a height difference ratio (M H ), a top difference ratio (M T ) and a bottom difference ratio (M B ) of the first character and the second character; and bb) combining the further score with the score corresponding to the particular characters to form a combined score.