1. A method for generating patterns for use in online character recognition, the method comprising: performing one or more pre-processing operations on a character sample; performing one or more feature extraction operations on the character sample, wherein the one or more feature extraction operations produce a feature vector for the character sample, wherein said performing the one or more feature extraction operations utilizes a Gabor filter, wherein the one or more feature extraction operations comprise: extracting directional features based on the direction of the character sample's points; generating directional pattern images based on the directional features; filtering the directional pattern images using a Gabor filter; and forming the feature vector based on the filtered directional pattern images; performing statistical training to generate patterns based on the feature vector of the character sample; storing the patterns in a memory, wherein the patterns are configured to be used to recognize handwritten characters.