Arabic online handwriting recognition: a survey

Nowadays, Arabic handwriting recognition is an active research area. The optical character recognition is classified into two approaches offline and online. There are many studies and applications for Arabic offline recognition, both typed and handwritten, yet there are few studies on Arabic Online recognition. Online recognition, in general, is oriented to only handwritten. The cursive, shapes, dots and delayed strokes of Arabic letters are the most challenging tasks to develop and improve an online system for the Arabic language. Moreover, handwriting of many Arab people becomes poor with low handwriting skills, especially after the cancellation of the Arabic calligraphy subject in the educational system in many Arabic countries. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on Arabic online handwriting recognition for the past few years. The paper aims to elevate the research in this subject, reveal the avenues for improving the recognition of Arabic online handwriting and enhance the skills of the Arab people in handwriting via online teaching and training system.