Government promotes common Chinese language interface
18 - 03 - 2003

The Government is committed to promoting a common Chinese language interface to help the public communicate electronically in Chinese.

The pivotal elements of the common Chinese language interface are the adoption of the ISO 10646 international coding standard and the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS).

The "ISO 10646 Information Centre" website has been recently set up to disseminate information on information technology (IT) products that support the language interface.

Speaking at a press conference today (March 18), the Assistant Director of Information Technology Services, Mr John Wong Shak-chuen, explained that the major problems in conducting Chinese electronic communication are the use of different coding standards and the lack of characters in some Chinese character sets.

These result in hindrance in the use of Chinese characters in electronic communication and exchange of data.

Under the HKSAR Digital 21 Strategy, the Government has established an open and common Chinese language interface and has been adopting it in providing e-options under the E-government programme.

The Information Technology Services Department (ITSD) has actively participated in the development of the ISO 10646 international coding standard, a unified standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for coding characters in all major languages, including traditional and simplified Chinese characters.

"To facilitate the establishment of the common Chinese Language interface, the ITSD set up the Chinese Language Interface Advisory Committee (CLIAC) in 1999," Mr Wong said.

In collaboration with the CLIAC, the Government has published the HKSCS, which contains Chinese characters specific to the HKSAR and are commonly used by the Government and the public in electronic communication.

It has also submitted the HKSCS to the ISO for inclusion in the ISO 10646 international coding standard. Of the 4,818 characters in the latest HKSCS version, 4,783 are now included in the standard.

Most of the commonly used systems software, font software and Chinese input software already support the HKSCS.

With the adoption of the ISO 10646 international coding standard and the HKSCS, the exchange of Chinese characters in electronic documents and records will become more effective and accurate.

"To further promote the common Chinese language interface, the Government has informed relevant IT vendors that where appropriate, the Government would require IT products to support both ISO 10646 coding standard and the HKSCS and this would be suitably specified in its tender notices," Mr Wong said.

Two members of the CLIAC, Dr Lu Qin and Dr Cheung Kwan-hin, also spoke at the press conference today.

According to Dr Lu, the CLIAC had set up a special group to compile Cantonese pronunciations for Chinese characters in ISO 10646. The result of this work would facilitate the development of voice-activated computer-human interfaces including Cantonese voice recognition and text-to-speech technologies.

Dr Cheung explained that the CLIAC was compiling a list of Hong Kong commonly used Chinese characters for inclusion in a subset of the ISO 10646 standard. The subset was under development by ISO for use by electronic devices with a smaller capacity, such as mobile phones.

Also speaking at the press conference, the Executive Director (Acting) of the Hong Kong Productivity Council (HKPC), Dr Keung Wing-ching said, the HKPC had developed the ISO 10646 Information Centre website as a focal channel to disseminate information on IT products that support the ISO 10646 international coding standard and the HKSCS.

"Software vendors can promote their products while users can also search for suitable software via the website," he said. The website would contribute to making Chinese electronic communication more efficient, thus fostering e-commerce in Chinese communities.

With a user-friendly interface, the website has classified IT products into 11 categories, such as operating systems, Internet application software and office automation application software.

Detailed information on the level of support for the ISO 10646 international coding standard and HKSCS is provided for each product listed.

Software developers and vendors are encouraged to submit their product information for posting on the website. The address of the website is at http://itdnt2.hkpc.org/iso10646.

The public can download the software incorporating the ISO 10646 international coding standard and the HKSCS on the Digital 21 website (http://www.info.gov.hk/digital21/eng/structure/cli_tools.html).

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