HKSCS
From Free net encyclopedia
The Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (香港增補字符集; commonly abbreviated to HKSCS) is a set of Chinese characters -- 4,702 in total in the initial release -- used exclusively in Cantonese. It evolved from its precedent Government Chinese Character Set.
Due to the inherent differences between Mandarin and Cantonese, the Hong Kong Government recognized the need for a standardized set of proprietary characters that would allow for the streamlining of electronic communication; at the time, the Big5 Chinese encoding scheme did not contain a vast majority of these characters (some were erroneously cross-listed with similar characters). Subsequently, the HKSCS-1999 (HKSCS 1999 specification) was born. Following its acceptance, newer revisions were released in 2001 (adding 116 new characters) and in 2004 (adding 123 new characters), totalling 4,941 characters.
The HKSCS is currently supported by Big5 and the ISO 10646.
See also
External links
- Hong Kong Government site on the HKSCS
- Microsoft HKSCS Support for Windows Platform
- A character set that works on Mac OS X
- A free, open-source font supporting HKSCS
