Understanding Handwritten Text in a Structured Environment: Determining ZIP Codes from Addresses

Understanding a block of handwritten text means mapping it into a semantic representation, We describe an approach to reading a I>lock of handwritten text when there arc certain loose constraints placed on the spatial layout and syntax 01 the tnt. Early recognition of primitives guides the location of syntactic components. A system to read handwritten postal addresses is described as an instance. The semantic representation in this case is a digit string (ZIP Code). Method, for segmenting a string of digits into components and for recognizing digits using a multiplicity of rcwgnit.ers are given.