Character Recognition Based on Phenomenological Attributes

Abstract

A theoretical approach is suggested for describing upper-case letters not in terms of the physical attributes of their archetypes but in terms of more general descriptions of their underlying representations. A method is presented for finding these general descriptions through the study of ambiguous characters. Functional attributes are the describers of the underlying representations of letters. The relations between the physical attributes of the input character and the functional attributes that specify its identity are given in part by graphical context rules which incorporate the stylistic consistency within the character itself and its neighbors. The implications of our theory of characters to the areas of computerized character recognition and type design are noted.