CODEWITHSUNDEEP
character-encoding
Vadim Berman
Vadim Berman

Reputation: 2032

Is Windows codepage 936 a superset of both Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters?

It appears that many Traditional Chinese characters are supported by the Windows implementation of Simplified Chinese character set, which started as GBK / GB2312 and from my understanding now supports the entire GB18030.

The question is, are all the Traditional Chinese characters there? If yes, doesn't it make the Big5 character set totally redundant?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1470

Answers (1)

dan04
dan04

Reputation: 91209

There are only a handful of printable non-private-use characters (¯ˍ‧╴) present in code page 950 (Big5) but not in 936 (GB2312), none of which are Chinese ideographs. In that sense, yes, Big5 is “redundant”.

However, for various technical and political reasons, it's highly unlikely that all Traditional Chinese documents will immediately be converted to GB18030 (or UTF-8), so expect Windows to support CP950 for years to come.

Upvotes: 2

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