A Facsimile Based Text Editor Using Handwritten Mark Recognition

Abstract

A fundamental study on a facsimile based text editor using handwritten mark recognition is described with some experimental results. Every information for editting is given to the computer via facsimile. First, texts (handwritten, typed or printed) and five kinds of handwritten marks are input to the computer as binary pictures. Second, the marks are recognized to make the picture allocation list. Third, the fair copy of the text is constructed by rearranging the binary picture according to the list, and is output to the facsimle receiver. Manuscripts using almost any kinds of languages including English, Chinese, Japanese etc. are editted by this system. Moreover, the method described here can be combined with usual text editors or word processors, in order to reduce the keyboard based man machine interaction. Experiments based on a minicomputer controlled facsimile produced unexpectedly good results, and the report 11, was actually made using this method, with less than a half of efforts required in the usual way of Japanese manuscript writing with black ink, scissors and paste.