1. A computer-implemented method for searching a line pattern representation amongst a collection of line pattern representations, the method performed by executing computer executable instructions on one or more processors of the computer, the method comprising: detecting an input gesture input by a user into a computing system; encoding the input gesture by segmenting a line pattern associated with the input gesture into a plurality of segments and assigning a quantized value to each segment of the line pattern; automatically matching the input gesture against each of a plurality of line pattern representations, each representation representing a line pattern having a changing value in a first dimension as a function of a value in a second dimension, and each representation having an encoding comprising a plurality of quantized values associated with a plurality of segments of the each line pattern, and automatically matching comprising determining a measure of commonality between the encoding of the input gesture and the encoding of each of the plurality of line pattern representations; and visualizing at least one line pattern representation of the matched set on a display of the computing system.