1. A method for processing input signals representative of a hand written character, the input signals being generated by a handwriting transducer in response to a writer and being ordered as points each having an x-axis coordinate value and a y-axis coordinate value, comprising the steps of: coupling a handwriting processor to an output of the handwriting transducer for receiving the input signals; operating the handwriting processor to execute the steps of, (a) sorting points received from the input signals in terms of x-axis values; (b) sampling along the x-axis at intervals of .delta.x to provide a sequence of the form {x.sub.i }, where x.sub.i =x.sub.i-1 +.delta.x; (c) defining, for each sample point x.sub.i, a slice of width lw centered on that sample and associating all y-axis values within the width of the slice with that sample, thereby yielding a vector of the form y(x.sub.i); (d) quantizing a range of y-axis values to n.sub.y equispaced levels, l.sub.k, and assigning, for each x.sub.i, all associated y-axis values to one level in accordance with the expression: EQU y.epsilon.l.sub.k l.sub.k-1 .DELTA.l&lt;y&lt;l.sub.k .DELTA.l, where .DELTA.l=(ymax-ymin)/n.sub.y ; (e) constructing a bitmap of the slice having a grid size n.sub.y, the step of constructing including a step of determining, for each x.sub.i, a first feature vector fx(x.sub.i) of length n.sub.y, such that the kth element is one if at least one y-axis value was assigned to l.sub.k, and zero otherwise; (f) constructing, for each x.sub.i, a second feature vector of length 1, f.sub.cg (x.sub.i) such that: ##EQU11## where the summation is over all y-axis values within the slice associated with x.sub.i ; (g) determining a subset of points of {x.sub.i } such that the points are spaced ax apart, the subset of points being defined as {X.sub.i }; (h) constructing, at each location X.sub.i, an N dimensional spliced vector by concatenating together H.sub.x feature vectors f.sub.x preceding a current point X.sub.i, a feature vector f(X.sub.i) at the current point, and H.sub.x feature vectors succeeding X.sub.i to yield a spliced feature vector, F(x.sub.i), of length: EQU N=n.sub.y (2H.sub.x +1); (i) repeating Step (h) for f.sub.cg (x.sub.i) to obtain F.sub.cg (x.sub.i); (j) repeating steps (a) through (e) and (g) through (h) for the y-axis dimension to obtain a feature vector, F.sub.y (Y.sub.i); and further operating the handwriting processor to determine a most probable identification of the writer's handwriting in accordance with the obtained feature vectors.