1. A method for identifying plural characters in an unknown character pattern, the unknown character pattern comprising two-dimensional pixel data, said method comprising: a first generating step of generating potentially matching characters for a first character position in the unknown character pattern; a second generating step of generating potentially matching characters for a subsequent character position, wherein a spatial location of the subsequent character position is determined in accordance with a potentially matching character string for all previous character positions in the unknown character pattern, and wherein each potentially matching character generated for the subsequent character position is linked to the potentially matching character string, thereby forming plural new potentially matching character strings; and an identifying step of identifying the characters in the unknown character pattern in accordance with one of the potentially matching character strings that is most similar to the unknown character pattern.