Aims on Developing Reference Guide on Hong Kong Character Glyphs

Although ISO/IEC 10646 has a unified code set, and has paved the way for different Chinese encoding schemes towards unification, the code point that the ISO 10646 has allocated for each character only represents the abstract shape of the character. Different regions can define different character glyphs and make different kinds of computer fonts in order to serve for localized customary need.

Currently, most of the common computer fonts used in Hong Kong, which are developed by Chinese fonts developers from Mainland China or Taiwan, have not fully considered the written customs in Hong Kong. Nowadays, computers are used for publishing and teaching materials are almost all produced by computers. However, materials used in Hong Kong are often not printed in the right style. For example, ¡§¡¨should be the correct shape to print on the text-book, but most computers only supply the font for ¡§¡¨

In order to facilitate the publishing industry in Hong Kong and helping the font vendors to produce fonts accustomed to Hong Kong's writing conventions, the Hong Kong SAR Government has developed two sets of reference guides on Chinese character glyphs for computer systems in Hong Kong. One of the reference guide, referred to as The Reference Guide of the Kai Style Character Glyphs for Chinese Computer Systems in Hong Kong, closely reflects the handwritten style. The second reference guide, referred to as The Reference Guide of the Print Style (Song Style) Character Glyphs for Chinese Computer Systems in Hong Kong is for printed character style.

The reference guides covers all the characters in traditional style in the ISO/IEC 10646-1¡G2000, especially characters used in Hong Kong. Since ideographic characters are formed through components, the reference guides use the description of the character components to specify a character glyph. Namely, if the "¤¨(wood)" is used in the character "¾ð(tree)" appearing in the shape of "", all characters with "¤¨" on the left hand side should take the same glyph shape of "", such as "§ø¡AªL¡A§ú¡AªK" etc.

The key parts of the reference guides are provided in the sections followed.

Based on the reference guides, a set of downloadable font can also be obtained for personal use.