| |
New version of HK Supplementary Character Set released by
Government
31 - 12 - 2001
The Information Technology Services Department (ITSD) and the
Official Languages Agency (OLA) released a new version of the
Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS) today (December
31).
The HKSCS-2001 contains 116 more Chinese characters that are
used on computers in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
(HKSAR) in addition to those contained in the HKSCS which was
published in 1999.
Jointly developed by the Government and the Chinese Language
Interface Advisory Committee (CLIAC), the HKSCS-2001 also technically
aligns with the latest version of the ISO 10646 standard, namely
ISO/IEC 10646-2:2001, published by the International Organization
for Standardization (ISO) in November 2001.
A spokesman for ITSD said today, "To store data on computers
and conduct electronic communications, the data must be encoded
in accordance with a pre-defined coding scheme."
"Currently, there are different schemes for encoding data in
Chinese, such as the Big-5, Guo Biao and the ISO 10646 standard."
"But these coding schemes are unable to cover all the special
Chinese characters used in the HKSAR which include names of
persons and places, and the Cantonese dialect."
"To use such locally specific Chinese characters, computer users
may create such characters by defining the characters in the
user-defined area of the coding schemes employed on their computers."
"Such practice may not have much impact on the operation of
stand-alone computers. However, it will result in distortion
of information when electronic communication and data exchange
in Chinese are conducted across connected computers because
the user-defined characters created on one computer may not
be recognisable by other computers," he said.
In order to facilitate computer users to conduct electronic
communications in Chinese, the Government has developed an open
and common Chinese language interface for the HKSAR under the
"Digital 21" Strategy for IT development.
A pivotal element of this open and common Chinese language interface
is the adoption of the ISO 10646 coding standard and the HKSCS
so as to address the problems arising from the existence of
different coding standards and insufficient characters in some
Chinese character sets used on computers.
ISO 10646 is an international coding standard developed by the
ISO. It embraces characters used in major languages in the world
including traditional and simplified Chinese characters.
In 1999, the Government in collaboration with the CLIAC collected
Chinese characters that were used on computers but not yet included
in the Big-5 coding scheme from various sectors of the community
including Government. The HKSCS was published in the same year
based on the information so collected.
Characters contained in the HKSCS were submitted by the Government
to the ISO for inclusion in the ISO 10646 international coding
standard. Of the 4 702 characters in the HKSCS, 4 677 have been
included in the ISO 10646 standard.
Recognising the need for the public and government departments
to include new characters into the HKSCS from time to time,
the Government worked with CLIAC and published the procedures
and principles for inclusion of new characters in the HKSCS
in April 2000.
The CLIAC meets regularly to consider applications for inclusion
of characters in the HKSCS. Once approved, the new HKSCS characters
will be submitted to the Ideographic Rapporteur Group under
the ISO for consideration for inclusion in future releases of
the ISO 10646 standard.
So far, the CLIAC has accepted 116 new characters for adding
onto the 4 702 characters of the original HKSCS, thus bringing
the total number of characters contained in the HKSCS-2001 to
4 818.
Technical documents, reference fonts and input software of the
HKSCS-2001 are now available on the "Digital 21" web site ( www.digital21.gov.hk/eng/structure/struct_stand.html )
for free downloading and reference by members of the public.
Details of the CLIAC and the common Chinese language interface
are also available on the "Digital 21" web site for public reference.
- ENDS -
|
|