Chinese character stroke order rules and algorithms

http://blog.tutorming.com/mandarin-chinese-learning-tips/7-basic-rules-to-chinese-stroke-order

Explains how to draw Chinese characters. This is not only useful for correct calligraphy, but useful to know when looking up characters in a Chinese dictionary. If you see a character you don’t recognize, you can’t look it up by Pinyin/pronunciation. So a particular dictionary style goes by stroke order. There is a list of first strokes, from there you get to a list of possible second strokes (given the first stroke) until things are narrowed down enough that you can just pick the character you seek from a list.