Search Engines for Handwritten Documents

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Massachusetts have created a tool for automatically searching handwritten historical documents, such as the 140,000 pages that make up George Washington's personal papers in the Library of Congress. The most interesting part is that the papers are scanned versions of the originals and the search tool actually recognizes the handwritten text from these images."

Comments

Who still reads those?

[Anonymous Coward]

In America, handwriting is only for old people.

Re:Who still reads those?

[gcaseye6677]

Cursive writing certainly is. I can barely even read it anymore, much less write it. Does anybody else who is under 30 still write in cursive, other than when they made you do it in elementary school?

Umm

[swtaarrs]

The most interesting part is that the papers are scanned versions of the originals and the search tool actually recognizes the handwritten text from these images.

How else would it search handwritten documents? Am I missing something here?

A waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

These documents are old and handwritten. Why waste the processing power decyphering results for each search when you can decypher the text once with a similar algorithm and search an index built that way? It's not like the information is ever going to change. (unless we do rewrite history)

Re:Handwriting sucks

[metlin]

You're apparently not into the pure sciences like math or physics.

I'd hate to be able to type in my equations, there's a feel to working things out on paper and pen. Besides, the tactile sensation of writing on paper is simply wonderful. No amount of typing can replace that.

Nothing beats a good old fountain pen and writing on good paper =)