Are there plans for handwriting recognition?

Solution 1:

Ubuntu keeps all it's plans in a system on launchpad called blueprints, each feature or plan is carefully laid out and given a time line. Searching this database I can find no release targeted specifications for handwriting. But I did find this user created specification back in Boston-UDS 2007:

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/handwriting-recognition

Perhaps it's time for you and others to pick this up and beat the drum so Mark and the Platform team will take the lack of handwriting recognition as a problem that needs fixing in the next release.

Now Ubuntu is based on Gnome, and checking Ubuntu functionality at this level wouldn't be complete without looking for gnome solutions. For that I come across this project called CellWriter:

http://risujin.org/cellwriter/

Gnome plans are not firm on the matter of hand reorganisation, so it's not likely we'll get leadership in putting the functionality into Gnome by default. My best advice would be to try CellWriter, if it does the job then push for it's inclusion by default by creating or modifying the blueprint and keeping at the issue through the release cycle.