1. A method for recognition of a handwritten pattern comprising one or more curves and representing a plurality of symbols, said method comprising: detecting the handwritten pattern as a sequence of points along the one or more curves of the handwritten pattern, identifying potential diacritics in the sequence of points of the handwritten pattern, selecting core points among the sequence of points, wherein said core points are selected for use in segmenting the handwritten pattern and recognizing these segments of the handwritten pattern as symbols, determining features of the one or more curves at or in the vicinity of each core point, assigning at least one feature associated with a identified potential diacritics to each core point of a subset of core points, and comparing the handwritten pattern to templates, each template representing at least one symbol or part of a symbol, said comparing comprising: stepwise analyzing the core points in sequence, wherein core points represent possible segmentation points and sequences of core points from a first possible segmentation point to a second possible segmentation point represent possible symbols, said analyzing being performed by matching the features of sequences of core points that either start with the first core point or the last core point of a previous sequence of core points to said templates and calculating a distance value, and assigning a cumulative distance value to the last core point in the matched sequence of core points, said cumulative distance value being a sum of a distance value assigned to the first core point in the sequence and the calculated distance value, whereby a smallest cumulative distance value for all sequential core points is assigned to the last core point and corresponds to a sequence of matched templates which represent a plurality of symbols as a possible recognition result of the handwritten pattern.