OCR software for handwritten notes

I am looking for a way to recognize handwriting of scanned notes (in PDF format).

It doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to free, but before paying I would like to try it (even with just a single page).

It doesn't necessarily have to be a native Mac OS X application. I would be OK with an online application, or a Unix application to install or compile. In other words, anything that works somewhat decently would be OK.

I am also not necessarily looking for a perfect result. Even transforming my notes into a searchable PDF with just some of the text recognized would be better than nothing.

If you're fammiliar with any programming language, take a look @ ocrsdk.com, it's a website that lets you upload images through web API and sends you back OCRed data. Here's the documentation on handwriting recognition: http://ocrsdk.com/documentation/quick-start/text-fields/ and here are some codesamples @ github: https://github.com/abbyysdk/ocrsdk.com There's a nice 50 pages free trial without any upfront charges.

Evernote does have handwriting recognition, but unfortunately right now it requires JPG format. It cannot handle PDFs. So your work-around may be to consider converting PDF -> JPG using Preview, etc. and then importing into Evernote for recognition. FYI, the handwriting recognition in Evernote for JPG is decent, but not nearly OCR-level from my experiences.

Also, this post describes a good workflow to use Evernote to recognize handwritten notes.

You could use Evernote for this (Free). Just import all of your PDF's as notes and after some time (you can speed this up by upgrading to a paid account), it will automatically process them and recognize the handwriting. You won't be able to extract the OCR text from the notes, but you can search for it.

I realize that you are looking for a Mac OS application, but for the benefit of readers drawn to this topic by the search for handwriting recognition, I'd like to mention MyScript Memo and Notes Plus on iOS. They share a handwriting recognition engine that seems to work very well in my hands. MyScript memo has a free version that anyone with an iOS device can try.

(I also see that you are looking to recognize handwritten notes scanned from paper, which these apps will not do. They recognize handwritten notes written directly on the iOS device.)