Handwritten Text Generation (HTG)

A curated collection of methods, datasets, and evaluation tools for Handwritten Text Generation (HTG).

❗ Latest Update: 5 Dec 2025

🚧 Under Construction (updates might be needed)

This repo is a work based on the PhD monograph thesis Handwritten Text Generation with Diffusion Models: Beyond Visual Quality

Konstantina Nikolaidou, 2025 - Advisors: Marcus Liwicki, George Retsinas, Giorgos Sfikas

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📚 Contents

• 🧠 HTG Methods
  • Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)
  • Diffusion Models
  • Autoregressive Models
  • Variational Autoencoders (VAEs)
• 📝 Handwriting Datasets
  • Modern Handwriting Datasets
  • Synthetic Handwriting Datasets
• 📖 Surveys
• 🧩 Evaluation

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🧠 HTG Methods

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Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)

Method / Model	Paper (full title)	Venue / Year	Granularity / Setting	Paper / Code Link
Alonso et al.	Adversarial Generation of Handwritten Text Images Conditioned on Sequences	ICDAR 2019	offline, word-level	📄 Paper 💻 Code (unofficial)
ScrabbleGAN	ScrabbleGAN: Semi-Supervised Varying Length Handwritten Text Generation	CVPR 2020	offline, variable-length words	📄 Paper 💻 Code
GANwriting	GANwriting: Content-Conditioned Generation of Styled Handwritten Word Images	ECCV 2020	offline, word-level	📄 Paper 💻 Code
Davis et al.	Text and Style Conditioned GAN for the Generation of Offline-Handwriting Lines	BMVC 2020	offline, line-level	📄 Paper 💻 Code
GANwriting-Line	Content and Style Aware Generation of Text-Line Images for Handwriting Recognition	TPAMI 2021	offline, line-level	📄 Paper
SmartPatch	SmartPatch: Improving Handwritten Word Imitation with Patch Discriminators	ICDAR 2021	offline, word-level	📄 Paper 💻 Code
HWT (Handwriting Transformers)	Handwriting Transformers	CVPR 2021	offline, word/line-level	📄 Paper 💻 Code
HiGAN	HiGAN: Handwriting Imitation Conditioned on Arbitrary-Length Texts and Disentangled Styles	AAAI 2021	offline, arbitrary length	📄 Paper 💻 Code
JokerGAN	JokerGAN: Memory-Efficient Model for Handwritten Text Generation with Text Line Awareness	ACMM 2021	offline, word-level	📄 Paper
HiGAN+	HiGAN+: Handwriting Imitation GAN with Disentangled Representations	ACM TOG 2022	offline, word-level	📄 Paper 💻 Code
SLOGAN	SLOGAN: Handwriting Style Synthesis for Arbitrary-Length and Out-of-Vocabulary Text	IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems 2022	offline, arbitrary-level	📄 Paper
VATr	Handwritten Text Generation From Visual Archetypes	CVPR 2023	offline, word-level	📄 Paper 💻 Code
TextStyleBrush	TextStyleBrush: Transfer of Text Aesthetics from a Single Example	TPAMI 2023	offline, in-the-wild, word-level	📄 Paper
JokerGAN++	Handwritten Text Generation with Character-specific Encoding for Style Imitation	ICDAR 2023	offline, line-level	📄 Paper
VATr++	VATr++: Choose Your Words Wisely for Handwritten Text Generation	TPAMI 2024	offline, word/line-level	📄 Paper 💻 Code
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Diffusion Models

Method / Model	Paper (full title)	Venue / Year	Granularity / Setting	Paper / Code Link
CTIG-DM	Conditional Text Image Generation with Diffusion Models	CVPR 2023	offline, scene-text, word-level, non-latent	📄 Paper
WordStylist	WordStylist: Styled Verbatim Handwritten Text Generation with Latent Diffusion Models	ICDAR 2023	offline, word-level, latent	📄 Paper 💻 Code
DiffusionPen	DiffusionPen: Few-Shot Handwritten Text Generation with Hybrid Style Encoding	ECCV 2024	offline, in-the-wild, one-shot, few-shot, word (+line), latent	📄 Paper 💻 Code
One-DM	One-DM: One-Shot Diffusion Mimicker for Handwritten Text Generation	ECCV 2024	offline, one-shot, non-latent, rendered content condition	📄 Paper 💻 Code
DiffWord	Word-Diffusion: Diffusion-Based Handwritten Text Word Image Generation	ICPR 2024	offline, word-level	📄 Paper
Brandenbusch	Semi-Supervised Adaptation of Diffusion Models for Handwritten Text Generation	arXiv 2024	offline, word-level, few-shot, CFG	📄 Paper
Zero-Shot Paragraph DM	Zero-Shot Paragraph-level Handwriting Imitation with Latent Diffusion Models	IJCV 2025	offline, paragraph-level	📄 Paper 💻 Code
DOG	Dual Orthogonal Guidance for Robust Diffusion-based Handwritten Text Generation	ICCV Workshops 2025	diffusion guidance, offline, in-the-wild	📄 Paper

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Autoregressive Models

Method / Model	Paper (full title)	Venue / Year	Granularity / Setting	Paper / Code Link
Emuru	Zero-Shot Styled Text Image Generation, but Make It Autoregressive	CVPR 2025	font-based, synthetic, line-level, autoregressive	📄 Paper 💻 Code
Eruku	Zero-Shot Styled Text Image Generation, but Make It Autoregressive	WACV 2026	font-based, synthetic, line-level, autoregressive	📄 Paper 💻 Code

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Variational Autoencoders (VAEs)

Method / Model	Paper (full title)	Venue / Year	Granularity / Setting	Paper / Code Link
Cross-VAE	Modality Conversion of Handwritten Patterns by Cross Variational Autoencoders	ICDAR 2019	online/offline conversion, character-level	📄 Paper
DeepWriteSYN	DeepWriteSYN: On-line Handwriting Synthesis via Deep Short-Term Representations	AAAI 2021	online, character/short-sequence	📄 Paper
Emuru-VAE	Zero-Shot Styled Text Image Generation, but Make It Autoregressive	CVPR 2025	font-based, writer/HTR VAE pre-training on synth lines	📄 Paper 💻 Code

📝 Handwriting Datasets

📄 Modern Handwriting Datasets

Dataset	Paper	Year	Description	Links
IAM Handwriting Database	The IAM-database: an English sentence database for offline handwriting recognition – Marti & Bunke	2002	1.5K pages, 82K text lines, 115K words of unconstrained English handwriting from 657 writers. Standard benchmark for Latin-script HTR and HTG.	📄 Paper 🗂️ Dataset
CVL Handwriting Database	CVL-DataBase: An Off-Line Database for Writer Retrieval, Writer Identification and Word Spotting – Kleber et al.	2013	English/German handwritten texts from 310 writers, supporting writer identification, retrieval and word-level analysis.	📄 Paper 🗂️ Dataset
RIMES	RIMES evaluation campaign for handwritten mail processing – Augustin et al.	2006	Large-scale French handwriting database collected from postal mail, with page- and line-level annotations for HTR.	📄 Paper 🗂️ Dataset
GNHK	GNHK: a dataset for English handwriting in the wild – Lee et al.	2021	687 camera-captured pages with 39K text instances, 9K lines and 173K characters. Focused on in-the-wild handwritten text under real-world degradations.	📄 Paper 🗂️ Dataset
Imgur5K	TextStyleBrush: Transfer of Text Aesthetics From a Single Example – Krishnan et al.	2023	~5K images and ~135K word instances of diverse “in-the-wild” handwriting sourced from Imgur, used to evaluate one-shot style transfer and robust HTG.	📄 Paper 🗂️ Dataset

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✨ Synthetic Handwriting Datasets

Dataset	Paper	Year	Description	Links
IIIT-HWS	Generating Synthetic Data for Text Recognition – Krishnan & Jawahar	2016	~9M synthetic handwritten word images rendered with handwriting-style fonts and heavy augmentation, widely used for pretraining HTR/word-spotting models.	📜 Paper 📂 Dataset
Font²	Evaluating synthetic pre-training for handwriting processing tasks – Pippi et al.	2023	Large-scale synthetic word corpus rendered with thousands of calligraphic/handwriting fonts, designed for supervised pretraining of style encoders and handwriting analysis.	📜 Paper 📂 Dataset

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📖 Surveys

• Handwriting synthesis: classifications and techniques
• Handwriting Generation and Synthesis: A Review
• Data Augmentation for Offline Handwritten Text Recognition: A Systematic Literature Review
• A survey of handwriting synthesis from 2019 to 2024: A comprehensive review

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🧩 Evaluation

• HWD: A Novel Evaluation Score for Styled Handwritten Text Generation - arxiv | paper | code
• Rethinking HTG Evaluation: Bridging Generation and Recognition - arxiv | paper | code

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📄 Citation

If you find this work useful for your research, please cite:

@phdthesis{nikolaidou2025handwritten,
  title={Handwritten Text Generation with Diffusion Models: Beyond Visual Quality},
  author={Nikolaidou, Konstantina},
  year={2025},
  school={Lule{\aa} University of Technology}
}

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