1. A character recognition method executed by a computer, the character recognition method comprising: specifying a character recognition target item from image data of the form; calculating a position and size of an image character in the specified character recognition target item; calculating a score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing the image character on the basis of characteristics of handwritten and printed characters; discriminating on the basis of the score whether the image character is handwritten or printed; calculating an average value of scores of characters of the recognition target item, and checking whether or not the recognition target item includes both handwritten and printed characters; and performing character recognition on each character of the recognition target item with an appropriate character recognition engine for a result of discriminating whether said each character is handwritten or printed and a result of checking whether the recognition target item includes both handwritten and printed characters, wherein: the calculating of the score includes: calculating a first score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing a gradation distribution of the image character; calculating a second score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing a character color of the image character; calculating a third score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing a gradation ratio between a turning point where a character stroke extracted from the image character changes and the character stroke other than the turning point; calculating a fourth score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing contrast at an edge of the character stroke, the contrast indicating a degree of change in gray level at a boundary between the character stroke and background; calculating a fifth score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing vertical sizes and center positions of the characters on the basis of a position and size of the image character; and calculating a sixth score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing character sizes and pitch on the basis of the position and size of the image character; and in discriminating whether the image character is handwritten or printed, the first to sixth scores are aggregated by weighting the first to sixth scores according to respective importance.
1. A character recognition method executed by a computer, the character recognition method comprising: specifying a character recognition target item from image data of the form; calculating a position and size of an image character in the specified character recognition target item; calculating a score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing the image character on the basis of characteristics of handwritten and printed characters; discriminating on the basis of the score whether the image character is handwritten or printed; calculating an average value of scores of characters of the recognition target item, and checking whether or not the recognition target item includes both handwritten and printed characters; and performing character recognition on each character of the recognition target item with an appropriate character recognition engine for a result of discriminating whether said each character is handwritten or printed and a result of checking whether the recognition target item includes both handwritten and printed characters, wherein: the calculating of the score includes: calculating a first score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing a gradation distribution of the image character; calculating a second score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing a character color of the image character; calculating a third score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing a gradation ratio between a turning point where a character stroke extracted from the image character changes and the character stroke other than the turning point; calculating a fourth score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing contrast at an edge of the character stroke, the contrast indicating a degree of change in gray level at a boundary between the character stroke and background; calculating a fifth score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing vertical sizes and center positions of the characters on the basis of a position and size of the image character; and calculating a sixth score that quantifies a possibility of handwriting or printing by analyzing character sizes and pitch on the basis of the position and size of the image character; and in discriminating whether the image character is handwritten or printed, the first to sixth scores are aggregated by weighting the first to sixth scores according to respective importance. 4. The character recognition method according to claim 1 , wherein the analysis of the character color includes converting the image character into color space including hue, saturation, and value components, generating a saturation histogram and a value histogram, and determining based on distributions of the saturation and value whether the image character is achromatic or chromatic, and setting a value according to whether the image character is achromatic or chromatic, as the second score.