Handwriting input system of chinese guqin notation

Abstract

The guqin is an ancient Chinese musical instrument that has secured a key position in Chinese elite culture. The guqin has its own special notation composed of reduced characters. The input system of the guqin notation is necessary for digital storage and analysis of guqin notation. This article presents the first handwriting input system of guqin notation. This system adopts a radical-based approach. In this approach, the radicals of the input reduced character are extracted first. Next the layout template that best matches the character is found. The name of the character can then be interpreted according to the radicals and the matching layout template. Radical extraction is the key step of any radical-based approach. In this article a method of radical extraction for online cursive characters is proposed. Experimental results show that the approach is efficient and that the input system performs well.