10. A non-transitory storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by a computing system, cause the computing system to perform operations for identifying characters in a handwritten input on a touch-sensitive device, the operations comprising: receiving a handwritten user input via the touch-sensitive device; identifying a set of candidate characters based on the handwritten user input; estimating candidate support lines for each of the candidate characters; associating reference support lines for each candidate character; for each candidate character, measuring a deviation between the estimated support lines and reference support lines to determine one or more deviations from an expectation; ranking each candidate character based on a total deviation measurement for each candidate character; and identifying a best-ranked candidate character based at least in part on a smallest total deviation measurement.
14. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10 , wherein measuring the deviation for at least one candidate character comprises determining a scale deviation based at least in part on a comparison between a difference in distances of the reference support lines and a difference in distances of the candidate support lines.