English Character Recognition (CR) has been extensively studied in the last
half century and progressed to a level, sufficient to produce technology driven
applications. But same is not the case for Indian languages which are
complicated in terms of structure and computations. Rapidly growing
computational power may enable the implementation of Indic CR methodologies.
Digital document processing is gaining popularity for application to office and
library automation, bank and postal services, publishing houses and
communication technology. Devnagari being the national language of India,
spoken by more than 500 million people, should be given special attention so
that document retrieval and analysis of rich ancient and modern Indian
literature can be effectively done. This article is intended to serve as a
guide and update for the readers, working in the Devnagari Optical Character
Recognition (DOCR) area. An overview of DOCR systems is presented and the
available DOCR techniques are reviewed. The current status of DOCR is discussed
and directions for future research are suggested.