1. A storage device encoded with instructions that, when executed by a processing unit, configure the processing unit to perform acts comprising: acquiring time sequential, ink data for a handwritten East Asian character; producing conditioned ink data that comprises information in form of a writing sequence of the handwritten East Asian character; extracting features from the conditioned ink data, the features comprising at least one of a tangent feature, a curvature feature, a local length feature, a connection point feature, or an imaginary stroke feature; and using a Hidden Markov Model to provide an East Asian character that corresponds to the features being extracted.