Solving the Chinese Puzzle

When you consider the challenge of recognizing alphabetic handwriting, Lexicus's achievement with Chinese is remarkable.

William Zhao

While most native English speakers are used to the layout of a keyboard, most Asians aren't even familiar with the concept of a keyboard. This has effectively locked out a large population from the computer age entirely, especially in Chinese-speaking countries, where typing is a foreign notion.

To help tackle this problem, Motorola's Lexicus Division is introducing a Chinese handwriting recognizer called WisdomPen. Lexicus has attempted to address three common problems: recog nition speed, accuracy, and an inability to recognize cursive writing of Chinese characters.

We tested a beta version of Wisd omPen on a 486DX4/100 notebook that had 24 MB of memory, using a Wacom ArtPad digitizing tablet for input. Lexicus designed the software to run under the Chinese version of Windows 95. However, even with the necessary conversion middleware, it seems to run at an astonishing speed in the U.S. version.

The problem of misreading handwriting is particularly acute with Chinese. It has over 3000 characters in daily use--twice that number when you consider older texts and unusual names--and many are quite similar in structure. Figuring that business letters wouldn't present much of a challenge to WisdomPen, we started copying sentences from a book that was written 2000 years ago. This text contains many words seldom found in business. Out of the first 30 characters we copied, the recognizer misread only two, and it recognized some of the most complicated characters in Chinese.

With the beta version, we had to input characters into two fixed boxes. The software read each character within several second s of our lifting the pen from the tablet or upon our moving the cursor outside the input box. You can adjust the speed of character reading in the setup routine.

The shipping version will offer greater freedom in that you will be able to write anywhere on the tablet. This will let you copy texts continuously, without interruption. Unlike English and most Western languages, Chinese rarely links characters together. Therefore, the software can always process each character separately. The system also lists the most probable next character. This feature worked well for business letters.

Lexicus plans to market WisdomPen first in Asia/Pacific Chinese-speaking countries. The package will include a digitizer and a pen.

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Product Information

WisdomPen...............under $500

Motorola Corp.
Lexicus Division
Palo Alto, CA
Phone:    (800) 539-4287 or (415) 462-6801
Fax:      (415) 323-4772
Internet: 
http://www.mot.com/lexicus/

Circle 979 on Inquiry Card.

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WisdomPen

screen_link (40 Kbytes)

The ultimate GUI, WisdomPen uses icons to pick commands for recognizing characters in a pictographic language.

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William Zhao is with Hewlett-Packard in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. You can contact him on the Internet at William_Zhao@HP-Chelmsford-om1.om.hp.com .