Convert scanned handwriting to ASCII text?

Man I do not know of anything short of buying one of those livescribe pens or getting a custom font made from your handwriting

When I search Google for handwriting to ascii the first thing that comes up is this thread :)

I know Office OneNote can convert text that you write in it to typed… I don’t know how it would do with anything copy-pasted in for sure, never tried it. But maybe? (At least get it to symbols the computer recognizes, then you can format it wherever)
But the technology must exist somewhere, I’d be really surprised if it didn’t

Really? I just asked this a few minutes ago, and Google already indexed it?!?!

I’ve seen those pens. They don’t record what you write, they record what they hear, and link it to what you write on special paper. That’s great for taking notes in a classroom, but not for what I need. Thanks anyway.

It is generally considered too difficult to do at this point.
However new developments in IR [intelligent Recognition and somewhat different from OCR] are gradually emerging see
One package you might try is Charactell
@DancingMind is correct when he mentions Office OneNote [which was bundled with many XP computers] but it, like other software along these lines needs to be trained to recognize the particular handwriting by feeding it enough sample letterforms for it to work.

@HungryGuy was not a pen it was a small applet bundled with windows. Or maybe it was called evernote. I didn’t bother with it, didn’t have the patience. see

That’s not what I need. I need a way to write handwritten notes when I’m away from my computer, and then convert them to ASCII text.

A pen that can do that on the fly and then download the ASCII text via USB when I get home would be okay, but I don’t really want to have to carry a specific pen and/or special writing paper around with me everywhere I go.

That Charactell is exactly what I want. I downloaded the trial version, but haven’t tried it yet. When I do, I’ll let you all know how well it works.