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Windows XP Font Pack for ISO 10646:2003 + Amendment 1 Traditional Chinese Support is available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003

Article ID: 977801 - View products that this article applies to.

Introduction

This article describes the Windows XP Font Pack for ISO 10646:2003 + Amendment 1 Traditional Chinese Support (HKSCS-2004) update for Windows XP and for Windows Server 2003.

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Since 2001, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector in Hong Kong has identified the Chinese characters that are mainly used in Hong Kong. These characters are collectively known as the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS). The HKSCS was adopted as the universal standard for Chinese characters by the ISO-10646 standard. Before the ISO-10646 standard adopted the HKSCS, Microsoft supported the HKSCS characters by providing the HKSCS-2001 update for Windows XP. The HKSCS-2001 update contains two parts: the font part and the Input Method Editor (IME) part. To define HKSCS characters, the fonts and IMEs provided by the HKSCS-2001 update used Private Use Area (PUA) code point values.

By 2004, all HKSCS characters were defined in the ISO-10646 standard. Therefore, Windows Vista and Windows 7 support HKSCS characters that are encoded in both PUA and the ISO-10646 standard. This enables backward compatibility with Windows XP. Documents that are created in Windows XP can be opened and displayed correctly in Windows Vista and in Windows 7. However, if a document that contains HKSCS characters was created in Windows Vista or in Windows 7, the document might not be displayed correctly in Windows XP. To resolve this problem, Microsoft has released a new update, HKSCS-2004, for Windows XP and for Windows Server 2003.

The HKSCS-2004 update supports all the HKSCS characters that were defined in the ISO-10646 standard. The HKSCS-2004 update replaces the Windows XP version of the MingLiu and the PMingLiu fonts with Windows 7 version of them. If the HKSCS-2001 update has previously been applied on a computer, the HKSCS-2004 update also replaces the Windows XP version of the MingLiu_HKSCS font with Windows 7 version. In addition, the HKSCS-2004 update installs Windows 7 versions of the MingLiU-ExtB, of the MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB, and of the PMingLiU-ExtB fonts onto the operating system. If the HKSCS-2001 update has previously been applied on a computer, the HKSCS-2004 update only replaces the font part of the HKSCS-2001 update, and not the IME part of the HKSCS-2001 update. Therefore, after they apply the HKSCS-2004 update, users can view documents that contain HKSCS characters encoded in both PUA and in ISO-10646 standard. However, users cannot input HKSCS characters encoded in ISO-10646 standard.

Known limitations of the update

The surrogate fallback mechanism only works for TrueType and for OpenType fonts. Raster fonts cannot use MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB as the surrogate fallback font for HKSCS characters encoded in ISO-10646. Therefore, raster fonts, such as MS Sans Serif, System, and Terminal can only display HKSCS characters that are encoded in the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP, U+0000-U+FFFF). HKSCS characters encoded in Extension B cannot be displayed by raster fonts. Extension B characters that were supported in the HKSCS 2001 update by using PUA code point values can be displayed by raster fonts.
In the Windows 7 version of Mingliu.ttc, the glyphs for Latin characters are changed. Most of the changes are difficult to see. However, there are noticeable changes for the following characters:
- Caron (also known as Mandarin Chinese third tone, U+02C7)
- Modifier letter acute accent (also known as Mandarin Chinese second tone, U+02CA)
- Modifier letter grave accent (also known as Mandarin Chinese fourth tone, U+02CB)
The following table lists the Unicode characters, and the glyph changes between Windows 7 and Windows XP.
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Because Office has its own font binding mechanism, Office applications such as Word or Excel may display boxes (undefined glyph) instead of Unicode encoded HKSCS characters. To workaround this issue, use Extension B fonts, such as MingLiU-ExtB, MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB, or PMingLiU-ExtB, to display the Unicode encoded HKSCS characters.

Update information

The following files are available for download from the Microsoft Download Center:

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Operating system	Update
All supported x86-based versions of Windows XP and of Windows Server 2003	Collapse this imageExpand this image Download the update package now. (http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/2/E/A2EE3F65-3B12-4563-9DBB-2090A08ED7EC/HKSCS2004-x86.EXE)
All supported x64-based versions of Windows Server 2003 and of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition	Collapse this imageExpand this image Download the update package now. (http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/2/E/A2EE3F65-3B12-4563-9DBB-2090A08ED7EC/HKSCS2004-x64.EXE)

Prerequisites

To apply this update, you must be running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Additionally, you must have the following language pack installed: Chinese (Traditional Hong Kong. S.A.R). The locale has to be set to Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong S.A.R.).

Restart requirement

You may have to restart the computer after you apply this update.

Update replacement information

This update replaces the HKSCS 2001 update.

Note We do not recommend that you apply the HKSCS-2001 update again after you apply this update. If you apply the HKSCS-2001 update after you apply this update, the old font in the HKSCS-2001 update is installed on the computer. Therefore, documents that contain HKSCS characters that are encoded in the ISO-10646 standard do not display correctly.

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