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The Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) announced today (April 2) that the principles for the inclusion of characters in the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS) were revised. For newly included HKSCS characters, only ISO 10646 code points will be assigned and Big 5 code points will cease to be assigned.
In 1999, the Government released the HKSCS to collect unique characters commonly used by the Government and public in electronic communication and provide an effective mechanism and principles for the inclusion of characters used in Hong Kong to address the incompatibility among different coding schemes which causes distortion of information or incorrect display of characters in electronic communication.
The Chinese Language Interface Advisory Committee which has been tasked to manage the HKSCS, when including new characters, would assign code points in compliance with the ISO 10646 standard and the then prevailing BIG 5 coding scheme.
To foster the adoption of international standards, with effect from March 31, 2008, the committee will only assign ISO 10646 code points to newly included HKSCS characters.
The ISO 10646 standard is an international coding standard that embraces characters used in all major languages in the world, including ideographic characters in traditional and simplified Chinese. The adoption of the ISO 10646 standard and the HKSCS provides a unified coding standard that ensures compatibility.
The industry and public may consider migrating their computer systems to ISO 10646 standard in accordance with their business and daily needs.
All the HKSCS characters already assigned with code points before the effective date will not be affected.
For more information and downloading of the latest HKSCS, please visit the theme website on Common Chinese Language Interface at www.ogcio.gov.hk/ccli
Ends/Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Issued at HKT 14:40
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