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The Office of the Government Chief Information Officer has made available a "Chinese Input Utility" software for free downloading to facilitate Microsoft Windows XP users to conduct electronic communication in Chinese effectively.

The software supports the latest version of the ISO 10646 international coding standard, (ISO 10646:2003), published by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) in April 2004 and the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set 2001 (HKSCS-2001). It supports four input methods - Changjei, Quick, Stroke Count and Unicode Internal Code. The Chinese Input Utility enables Windows XP users to input, display and print Chinese characters supported under the ISO 10646 standard and HKSCS-2001.

The software includes more than 1,600 HKSCS-2001 characters defined under the Extension B of the ISO 10646 standard. Those Chinese characters are encoded according to ISO 10646 standard and follow the "Guidelines on the Song Style (Print Style) Character Glyphs for Chinese Computer Systems in Hong Kong" that was jointly published by the Chinese Language Interface Advisory Committee and the Government in February 2002.

The ISO 10646 standard contains more than 70,000 ideographic characters, including all the characters in Kangxi, Han Yu Da Zi Dian and Han Yu Da Ci Dian dictionaries.

The Chinese Input Utility can be downloaded freely from the "Digital 21" website (www.info.gov.hk/digital21/eng/structure/cli_tools.html). Before downloading the software, users should read the Terms of Use and installation procedures posted on the webpage.

Making the Chinese Input Utility available to public users will meet the Government's objective of encouraging the adoption of common Chinese language interface in the community. This in turn will promote the development of IT products supporting the ISO 10646 standard and HKSCS by industry.

Further information on common Chinese language interface is available at the "Digital 21" website (www.info.gov.hk/digital21/eng/structure/cli_main.html).

Ends/Thursday, July 15, 2004

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