The latest version of the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set document has been released to facilitate computer input of special Chinese characters for electronic communication.

The character set contains two coding schemes for special characters that are used in the local community and the Government to describe names of people, places, scientific terms, or Cantonese dialects.

It contains 4,941 characters, 123 of which are in addition to those contained in the last release in 2001.

This open and common Chinese language interface is able to address the problems arising from the existence of different coding standards and insufficient characters in some Chinese character sets used on computers.

ISO inclusion

All the characters in the set have been accepted by the ISO for inclusion in the coming release of the ISO 10646 international coding standard.

The character set has adopted the Reference Guide on Song Style (Print Style) Character Glyphs for Chinese Computer Systems in Hong Kong, published by the Government in February 2002, for compiling the character glyphs.

A reference document, Indexing System by Radicals, which includes a radical table, a character index and a special character index, was also published today to allow search of characters in the character set by means of radicals. To download the document click here.

For further information about the character set visit Digital 21 Strategy website.