An improved method and mechanism for recognizing chirographs (handwritten characters) input into a computer system. A primary recognizer is provided for converting chirographs to code points, and secondary recognizers such as binary CART trees are developed and trained to differentiate chirographs which produce certain code points at the primary recognizer. Each such secondary recognizer is associated with each selected code point. When a chirograph is received, the chirograph is provided to the primary recognizer whereby a code point corresponding thereto is received. If the code point corresponds to one of the secondary recognizers, the chirograph is passed to the secondary recognizer, and a code point is returned from the secondary recognizer. If not, the code point provided by the primary recognizer is returned. The invention sets forth an automated process for training the CART trees and for optimizing the recognition mechanism by discarding CART trees which do not improve on the recognition accuracy of the primary recognizer.