Variant Chinese Character - Usage in Computing

Usage in Computing

Five of the 30 variant characters found in the preface of the Kangxi Dictionary which are not found in the dictionary itself.

Unicode deals with variant characters in a complex manner, as a result of the process of Han unification. In Han unification, some variants that are nearly identical between Chinese-, Japanese-, Korean-speaking regions are encoded in the same code point, and can only be distinguished using different typefaces. Other variants that are more divergent are encoded in different code points. On web pages, displaying the correct variants for the intended language is dependent on the typefaces installed on the computer, the configuration of the web browser, and the language tags of web pages. Systems that are ready to display the correct variants are rare because many computer users do not have standard typefaces installed and the most popular web browsers are not configured to display the correct variants by default. The following are some examples of variant forms of Chinese characters with different code points and language tags.

Different code points, Mainland China language tag	Different code points, Taiwan language tag	Different code points, Hong Kong language tag	Different code points, Japanese language tag
戶戸户	戶戸户	戶戸户	戶戸户
爲為为	爲為为	爲為为	爲為为
強强	強强	強强	強强
畫畵画	畫畵画	畫畵画	畫畵画
線綫线	線綫线	線綫线	線綫线
匯滙	匯滙	匯滙	匯滙
裏裡	裏裡	裏裡	裏裡
夜亱	夜亱	夜亱	夜亱
龜亀龟	龜亀龟	龜亀龟	龜亀龟

The following are some examples of variant forms of Chinese characters with the same code points and different language tags.

Same code point, different language tags
Mainland China language tag	Taiwan language tag	Hong Kong language tag	Japanese language tag
刃	刃	刃	刃
令	令	令	令
難	難	難	難
骨	骨	骨	骨
詩	詩	詩	詩
海	海	海	海
雪	雪	雪	雪
起	起	起	起
及	及	及	及
英	英	英	英
次	次	次	次
誤	誤	誤	誤
能	能	能	能
函	函	函	函
純	純	純	純
船	船	船	船
述	述	述	述
窗	窗	窗	窗