Incremental ideographic character input method

An apparatus for the incremental recognition ideographic characters, comprising

• an input device for the input of coordinate data representing strokes of an ideographic character;
• an input processor for the processing of said coordinate data;
• an incremental recognizer that is responsive to partial characters and generates a hypothesis list of at least one candidate character;
• a display device;
• a window on said display device which is divided into a first region for displaying strokes and a second region for displaying said at least one candidate character.

A method for incremental recognition of ideographic handwriting comprising in order the steps of:

• (1) entering at least one stroke of an ideographic character from a computer entry tablet;
• (2) providing said at least one stroke to an incremental character recognizer including a pre-processor and a statistical pattern classifier, said incremental recognizer producing a hypothesis list of at least one candidate character;
• (3) displaying said hypothesis list of candidate characters containing said at least one stroke;
• (4) selecting a correct character from among said candidate characters on said hypothesis list if it a correct character appears thereon;
• (5) entering at least one additional stroke of said ideographic character from said computer entry tablet if no candidate character is a correct character;
• (6) providing said at least one additional stroke to said incremental character recognizer and producing an updated hypothesis list of at least one candidate character;
• (7) displaying said updated hypothesis list of candidate characters containing every stroke;
• (8) selecting a correct character from among said candidate characters on said updated hypothesis list if it a correct character appears thereon;
• and
• (9) repeating steps (5) through (8) until a correct character is selected from said updated hypothesis list.

A method for incremental recognition of ideographic handwriting comprising in order the steps of:

• (1) entering at least one stroke of an ideographic character in natural stroke order from a computer entry tablet;
• (2) providing said at least one stroke to an incremental character recognizer including a pre-processor and a statistical pattern classifier, said incremental recognizer producing a hypothesis list of at least one candidate character;
• (3) displaying said hypothesis list of candidate characters containing said at least one stroke;
• (4) selecting a correct character from among said candidate characters on said hypothesis list if it a correct character appears thereon;
• (5) entering at least one additional stroke of said ideographic character in natural stroke order from said computer entry tablet if no candidate character is a correct character;
• (6) providing said at least one additional stroke to said incremental character recognizer and producing an updated hypothesis list of at least one candidate character;
• (7) displaying said updated hypothesis list of candidate characters containing every stroke;
• (8) selecting a correct character from among said candidate characters on said updated hypothesis list if it a correct character appears thereon;
• and
• (9) repeating steps (5) through (8) until a correct character is selected from said updated hypothesis list.