Handwriting recognition?

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Posted by tshare
May 24, 2017 at 02:53 PM

What are the options for recognizing, searching, and organizing handwriting? I have been searching for a reliable workflow for creating a database of handwritten documents with recognition/search capabilty. As a note taking and organization addict, I have explored Evernote, OneNote, and MyScript solutions and find all of them lacking.

Posted by Hugh
May 24, 2017 at 04:56 PM

tshare wrote:
What are the options for recognizing, searching, and organizing
>handwriting? I have been searching for a reliable workflow for creating
>a database of handwritten documents with recognition/search capabilty.
>As a note taking and organization addict, I have explored Evernote,
>OneNote, and MyScript solutions and find all of them lacking.

I’ve been interested in this question for fifteen or twenty years, primarily because of a conviction in an even earlier time amongst my collaborators and me that our best thinking (after due debate and discussion) was conducted “through the point of a pencil” (with an eraser on the other end, of course!). It was pleasing to see that recent findings in brain research appear to support our earlier prejudice.

There are at least three different types of handwriting recognition currently used by “pro-sumers” like us: search, as you say, as practiced on Evernote’s servers; handwriting-to-text using a special section of the input surface of a device and offering different printed-text interpretations of the handwriting, from which one can be chosen by the user (this is what some iPad handwriting-to-text apps now offer); and straight handwriting to text conversion (which was probably the first kind of handwriting recognition offered, but now less so because generally speaking it seems to be less accurate).

On accuracy, I think it’s important to understand that handwriting-recognition technology, though always improving, is as yet imperfect. It can’t offer the 98 or 99 percent accuracy that voice-recognition applications currently offer, with the right habits and hardware.

You did not say what your criticisms are of Evernote, OneNote or MyScript, but presumably they centre on accuracy. As I say, Evernote (and presumably), OneNote search handwriting on their own servers, and so the accuracy achieved is probably as good as it can be with current technology. MyScript is chiefly about handwriting-to-printed-text conversion; MyScript has been in business for more than 15 years, and has been developing its technology for longer still, and it licenses its technology to a number of other hardware and software companies. Its latest notes-to-text application for the iPad Pro and Android, MyScript Nebo, appears to be - from reviews and tests - just about the best you can currently get.

However, handwriting is a very personal thing. If none of those products can interpret or search your handwritten notes with sufficient accuracy, there is one further step you could take. That is to dictate your notes into your computer using dictation software. The printed text from your dictation still won’t be 100 percent accurate, but it may well be more accurate and more accurately searchable than handwriting, or printed text from handwriting recognition software, is likely to be.

Posted by Dr Andus
May 24, 2017 at 06:53 PM

One workaround might be to consider the handwritten notes as stage 1 of the note-taking process (and not bother about OCR-ing), and as stage 2, you could use a dictation software to transcribe them into typewritten text. And then the search will be perfect.

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