Subject: Re: Why it's called Big5?

From: Dr CK Farn <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 6 Jun 1992 14:23:25 +0800

>The question sounds stuipid, but I really don't know. Why is the Chinese
>coding system used in Taiwan called Big5? Just curious.

The following is what I know.  If I am wrong, someone please correct me.

During the early 80's (probably around 79-80), the III (Institute of
Iformation Industry, a goverment funded agency) of ROC launched a project
to develop a Chinese software product for use with PC's.  The software is
for general purpose use, and is meant to be an integrated package (like
Framework) including five major functions (WP, Spreadsheet, comms, file
handling, etc.).

There are five major functions in it, and the product is thus named BIG-5.
At that time, there were no suitable Chinese internal coding scheme for PC
(there were many mainframe based internal coding scheme, like CDC, IBM,
WANG, etc., but I thing at that time, selecting any one vendor based scheme
will make III liable to be accused of protecting one vendor), so they
develop their own internal Chinese coding scheme for the BIG-5 package.
BIG-5 as a sotware package was a market disaster, but the coding scheme
becomes the most popular in the micro-computer market.

Note that BIG-5 is not THE official chinese coding scheme.
_____________________________________________________________
Dr C.K.Farn       Information Mgmt Dept.,National Central U.,
(-S?~1j)          Chung-li, Taiwan 320, Republic of China
Tel: 886-3-426-7261,886-3-4227151x6527  Fax: 886-3-425-4604
Email: [email-masked]