Images of handwritten cursive records are extracted, and an automated search
on the images of the cursive records is performed based on an ASCII query for a
record. A cursive equivalent of the ASCII query is matched to the images of the
cursive records, and a similarity value is generated to indicate the extent of
match between features of the cursive equivalent of the ASCII query and features
of each cursive record. The records are sorted based upon their similarity value
determined in the matching process. This provides a candidate list of cursive record
images to be manually examined by a user for the purpose of making a final determination
as to whether any of the cursive records on the candidate list satisfy the query.
