7. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the chop line selection component selects the subset of candidate chop lines by: assigning each of the candidate chop lines to a plurality of groups, wherein the candidate chop lines in each group are all within a threshold logical distance from one another, said logical distance between two candidate chop lines being proportional to a sum of inverted pixel values lying between the two candidate chop lines; selecting a candidate chop line from each group that has a maximum confidence measure; eliminating any of the selected candidate chop lines if their confidence measure is below a threshold level to thereby provide a first set of candidate chop lines; and comparing pairs of candidate chop lines in the first set candidate chop lines and eliminating a first member of a compared pair if its confidence measure is less than a confidence measure of a second member of the pair and if a product of the confidence measure of the second member and a decreasing function of the logical distance between the first and second members is greater than the confidence measure of the second member to thereby provide a second set of candidate chop lines which are designated to be the subset of the candidate chop lines that correspond to the plurality of chop lines.
8. The apparatus of claim 7 wherein the logical distance between two candidate chop lines is proportional to a weighted sum of the inverted pixel values lying between the two candidate chop lines, wherein inverted pixel values of pixels closer to a central line through the textual line are weighted more than inverted pixel values of pixels more remote from the central line toward either the mean-line or the base-line.