The Big5-HKSCS codec provides conversion to and from the Big5-HKSCS encoding.

The codec grew out of the QBig5Codec originally contributed by Ming-Che Chuang <mingche@cobra.ee.ntu.edu.tw>. James Su <suzhe@turbolinux.com.cn> <suzhe@gnuchina.org> and Anthony Fok <anthony@thizlinux.com> <foka@debian.org> implemented HKSCS-1999 QBig5hkscsCodec for Qt-2.3.x, but it was too late in Qt development schedule to be officially included in the Qt-2.3.x series.

Wu Yi <wuyi@hancom.com> ported the HKSCS-1999 QBig5hkscsCodec to Qt-3.0.1 in March 2002.

With the advent of the new HKSCS-2001 standard, James Su <suzhe@turbolinux.com.cn> <suzhe@gnuchina.org> generated the Big5-HKSCS<->Unicode tables with a very space-efficient algorithm. He generously donated his code to glibc in May 2002. Subsequently, James has generously allowed Anthony Fok to adapt the code for Qt-3.0.5.

Currently, the Big5-HKSCS tables are generated from the following sources, and with the Euro character added:

1. http://www.microsoft.com/typography/unicode/950.txt
2. http://www.info.gov.hk/digital21/chi/hkscs/download/big5-iso.txt
3. http://www.info.gov.hk/digital21/chi/hkscs/download/big5cmp.txt

There may be more fine-tuning to the QBig5hkscsCodec to maximize its compatibility with the standard Big5 (2002) mapping as determined by Li18nux Big5 Standard Subgroup. See http://www.autrijus.org/xml/ for the various Big5 CharMapML tables.