Mapping out blocks

I have a graphic document which is in color. I don't care what format (I can get it as a GIF, JPG, BMP, TIFF)
the documents is full of sentences in special characters (lets say Egyptian hieroglyphics)

I need to map out Rectangles of different Characters
(Like they did in the movie Star Gate if you recall) so I can isolate each Character individually and keep each character picture in an array for individual recognition later.

If anyone can help me recognize "White spaces" between the Characters, and create Rectangular areas around the different Characters (This would be something like a simple OCR Technique).

Thanks

How 'bout just making a bitmap with cells, all the same size (lets say 18x12 for argument's sake). Then you could easily split them up and do it that way.