1. Handwriting recognition apparatus, comprising: handwriting transducer means having an output providing x-y coordinate information generated by a writer while writing characters; first extracting means, having an input coupled to said output of said handwriting transducer means, for extracting and outputting temporally-based feature vectors from the x-y coordinate information; first training means, responsive to the temporally-based feature vectors, for providing and storing first corresponding character prototypes based on K-means Euclidean clustering and K-means Gaussian clustering of the temporally-based feature vectors; second extracting means, having an input coupled to said output of said handwriting transducer means, for extracting and outputting shape-based feature vectors from the x-y coordinate information; and second training means, responsive to the shape-based feature vectors, for providing and storing second corresponding character prototypes based on K-means Euclidean clustering and K-means Gaussian clustering of the shape-based feature vectors.