Building visual language parsers

Notepad computers promise a new input paradigm where users communicate with computers in visual languages composed of handwritten text and diagrams. A key problem to be solved before such an interface can be realized is the efficient and accurate recognition (or parsing) of handwritten input. We present techniques for building visual language parsers based on a new formalism, constrained set grammars. Constrained set grammars provide a high-level and declarative specification of visual languages and support the automatic generation of efficient parsers. These techniques have been used to build parsers for several representative visual languages. ©1991 ACM.