8. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer useable medium having computer readable program code functions embedded in said medium for causing a computer to: acquire a text image containing a line of Arabic characters; digitize the line of the Arabic characters to form a two-dimensional array of pixels each associated with a pixel value expressed in a binary number, wherein the two-dimensional array of pixels comprises a plurality of rows in a first direction and a plurality of columns in a second direction; count frequencies of consecutive pixels of a same pixel value in a string of pixels in a column of pixels, wherein adjacent strings of pixels each having different pixel values is defined by a transition in between, wherein the step of counting further comprises: stopping counting frequencies of consecutive pixels of a same pixel value in a column when number of transitions in the column reaches a predetermined cut-off transition number, wherein the predetermined cut-off transition number is obtained by statistical analysis on Arabic text prior to the step of digitizing the line of the Arabic characters; form a text feature vector using the frequency counts obtained from the strings in the column of pixels; and feed the text feature vector into a Hidden Markov Model to recognize the line of Arabic characters.
11. The computer program product of claim 8 , wherein the predetermined cut-off transition number is six.