Lexicus Offers Impressive Cursive Recognition

Perhaps no aspect of pen computing—not even battery technology—gets harsher treatment than handwriting recognition. But much like TV’s early Saturday Night Live players judged not to be ready for prime time, handwriting recognition is steadily improving with major talent lurking underneath.

One such system is Longhand, developed by Lexicus Corp initially for the PenPoint operating system. Lexicus has an excellent technology base which, when it came to be recognized by Motorola, led to the acquisition of Lexicus in November, 1993.

At COMDEX, Lexicus announced its Longhand Handwriting Recognition Software for Developers. The system, which runs on the Windows for Pen Computing platform, is a cursive recognizer that also understands print or a mix of print and cursive, matching most any individual writing style.

Longhand, which uses neural network technology to train the recognizer, includes a 25,000 word built-in dictionary along with a customizable user dictionary. Lexicus claims this writer-independent technology offers a recognition rate of 12 characters per second.

People writing with Lexicus interact with a small applet called the Lexipad. The Lexipad gives you the room to write clearly, and if desired, provides segmented lines to help you get the best results. When a mistake occurs, a pop-up list of likely alternatives, including those based on different word segmentation, is presented for quick correction.

Lexicus will ship its Longhand Handwriting Recognition Software for Developers in December, 1994. The product can be ordered directly from Lexicus for $149 by calling 1-800-LEXICUS. ❑

Lexicus Corporation
Bart Adao
490 California Avenue, Suite 300
Palo Alto, CA 94306
(800) LEXICUS
[email protected]