VATr++: Choose Your Words Wisely for Handwritten Text Generation

Styled Handwritten Text Generation (HTG) has received significant attention in recent years, propelled by the success of learning-based solutions employing GANs, Transformers, and, preliminarily, Diffusion Models. Despite this surge in interest, there remains a critical yet understudied aspect - the impact of the input, both visual and textual, on the HTG model training and its subsequent influence on performance. This work extends the VATr (Pippi et al. 2023) Styled-HTG approach by addressing the pre-processing and training issues that it faces, which are common to many HTG models. In particular, we propose generally applicable strategies for input preparation and training regularization that allow the model to achieve better performance and generalization capabilities. Moreover, in this work, we go beyond performance optimization and address a significant hurdle in HTG research - the lack of a standardized evaluation protocol. In particular, we propose a standardization of the evaluation protocol for HTG and conduct a comprehensive benchmarking of existing approaches. By doing so, we aim to establish a foundation for fair and meaningful comparisons between HTG strategies, fostering progress in the field.