Implementation Challenges for Nastaliq Character Recognition

Character recognition in cursive scripts or handwritten Latin script has attracted researchers’ attention recently and some research has been done in this area. Optical character recognition is the translation of optically-scanned bitmaps of printed or written text into digitally editable data files. OCRs developed for many world languages are already in use but none exists for Urdu Nastaliq – a calligraphic adaptation of the Arabic script, just as Jawi is for Malay. Urdu Nastaliq has 39 characters against Arabic 28. Each character then has 2-4 different shapes according to its position in the word: initial, medial, final and isolated. In Nastaliq, inter-word and intra-word overlapping makes optical recognition more complex. Character recognition of the Latin script is relatively easier. This paper reports research on Urdu Nastaliq OCR, discusses challenges and suggest a new solution for its implementation.