Nintendo has licensed Zi Corporation's powerful handwriting recognition tools for use by DS developers.

Nintendo has announced a licensing agreement with interface software specialists Zi Corporation to allow DS developers to utilize Zi's powerful handwriting recognition tools. The software technology, dubbed Decuma, is a powerful and flexible tool to enable natural recognition of various languages. A glance at the corporate website has produced this summary of Decuma's uses:

Decuma Alphabetic handwriting recognition software provides fast and natural handwriting input, enabling users to focus on the content rather than the writing. Users can closely mimic writing with pen and paper, with letters and words being written and interpreted in a natural flow, allowing for easy editing and correction. The Decuma product portfolio is comprised of three handwriting recognition software products: Decuma Alphabetic, for English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and other western languages; Decuma Chinese for Simplified and Traditional Chinese; and Decuma Japanese, which supports Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana.

Furthermore, Milos Djokovic (chief technical officer and chief operating officer of Zi Corporation) shared his input:

"With Decuma, Nintendo DS users will experience natural handwriting recognition previously only available to PDA and smartphone users."

With handwriting recognition already appearing in certain titles such as Japan's Brain Training for Adults, this technology must be quite impressive indeed for Nintendo to seek a licensing agreement despite their own established tools. It will be interesting to see how creative developers use these new langauge tools in their DS creations.