Problem

One of the problems for local users in the use of Chinese on computers is that the character sets of popular coding schemes, such as Big-5 and the ISO 10646 standard, do not contain all the special Chinese characters used in Hong Kong. Examples of such locally specific characters include names of persons and places, and characters used in the Cantonese dialect.

To circumvent the problem, users may create the characters specific to Hong Kong on their computers. They do so by defining these characters in the user-defined area of the coding schemes used on their computers, such as Big-5 or the ISO 10646 standard. However, the user-defined characters created on one computer may not be recognizable by other computers, resulting in distortion of information when electronic communication and data exchange in Chinese are conducted across computers.

The Solution - HKSCS

In September 1999, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in collaboration with the Chinese Language Interface Advisory Committee published the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS). The HKSCS contains 4,702 Chinese characters that are specific to the Hong Kong environment and that are used by the public and the Government in electronic communication and data exchange conducted in Chinese.

By using the HKSCS, the public and the Government share a common set of locally specific characters on their respective computers. As a result, electronic communication and data exchange involving locally specific characters can be conducted more effectively and accurately.

In December 2001, a revised version of the HKSCS, namely HKSCS-2001, was published by the Government. The HKSCS-2001 contains 116 more Chinese characters in addition to those contained in the HKSCS which was published in 1999. The latest version of the HKSCS is the HKSCS-2004, which contains 123 more Chinese characters than the HKSCS-2001.

The HKSCS-2001 is available for download by the public on the web site (http://www.ogcio.gov.hk/ccli/eng/hkscs/download.html) for use on their computers.

In the following text and web pages, HKSCS is used for general description of the character set. Whenever necessitated by the context, the versions of the HKSCS will be specifically identified.