Code page 950


Code page 950 is the code page used on Microsoft Windows for Traditional Chinese. It is Microsoft's implementation of the de facto standard Big5 character encoding. The code page is not registered with IANA, and hence, it is not a standard to communicate information over the internet, although it is usually labelled simply as, including by Microsoft library functions.

Terminology and variants

The major difference between Windows code page 950 and "common" Big5 is the incorporation of a subset of the ETEN extensions to Big5 at 0xF9D6 through 0xF9FE. The ranges used by some of the other ETEN extended characters are instead defined as end-user defined characters.
IBM's implementation of CCSID 950, is slightly different, incorporating some of the ETEN extensions for lead bytes 0xA3, 0xC6, 0xC7 and 0xC8, while omitting those with lead byte 0xF9, mapping them instead to the Private Use Area as user-defined characters.
Microsoft updated their version of code page 950 in 2000, adding the euro sign at the double-byte code 0xA3E1. IBM refers to the euro sign update as CCSID 1370 or CCSID 1373. Code page 1373 matches Microsoft behaviour in which ETEN extensions are included.
CCSID 950 comprises single byte code page 1114 and double byte code page 947, whereas the euro sign extended CCSID 1370 comprises single byte code page 1114 and double byte code page 947.

Single byte codes

The following are the single-byte graphical characters included by IBM. The codes 0x00 though 0x1F and 0x7F may be used for C0 control codes instead, depending on context. As noted above, the single-byte euro sign at 0x80 is not included in IBM CCSIDs 950 or 1373, nor by Microsoft.
The rest are parts of a double byte sequence.

Private Use Area usage

This mapping is also used in HKSCS where a given glyph is not yet found in the Unicode revision specified.