An XML Representation for Annotated Handwriting Datasets for Online Handwriting Recognition

In this paper, we briefly descibe an XML representation for annotation of online handwriting data to support the development and evaluation of handwriting recognition algorithms, that is based on the emerging Digital Ink Markup Language (InkML) draft standard from W3C. In particular, we describe how the XML representation we have defined attempts to address issues of (i) support for different scripts, (ii) partial automation of labeling using recognition engines, (iii) planned as well as casual capture of handwriting data and (iv) semantic annotation of handwriting data at various levels such as character, word and phrase. The representation keeps the raw handwriting data (described by InkML) separate from its semantic interpretations. We also compare and contrast the XML representation with the extant UNIPEN representation for annotation of handwriting data. 1

Representation and Annotation of Online Handwritten Data

Annotated datasets of handwriting are a prerequisite for the design and training of handwriting recognition algorithms. In this paper, we briefly describe an XML representation for annotation of online handwriting data that uses the emerging Digital Ink Markup Language (InkML) standard from W3C for the representation of handwriting data. We then describe a tool based on the proposed representation that can be used for annotation of digital ink. Ease and speed of annotation are emphasized in the design of the tool. Together, the representation and the tool attempt to address the requirements of creation of annotated datasets of handwritten data in different scripts around the worldwide. 1