1. Apparatus for recognizing a string of characters of hand written text in an image loaded in a computing system, the apparatus comprising: holistic recognition means for recognizing the string of characters as a whole and generating a first answer list and a segmentation list, the first answer list containing a plurality of recognition answers for the string of characters in the image, the segmentation list containing segmentation information separating the character features making up each character in the answers; and analytical recognition means responsive to the segmentation list for recognizing a plurality of characters individually and generating a second answer list for the string of characters in the image.