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Archived talk. Post new Talk at the parent site: Talk:Morse_code

Addition of text from the code article

From the code article:

In the days when Morse code was widely used, elaborate commercial codes that encoded complete phrases into single words (five-letter groups) were developed, so that telegraphers became conversant with such "words" as BYOXO ("Are you trying to crawl out of it?"), LIOUY ("Why do you not answer my question?"), and AYYLU ("Not clearly coded, repeat more clearly."). The purpose of these codes was to save on cable costs.

Should this be added to the Morse code article?

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Probably, but I also put it back into code; it was a good example of the data compression use that wasn't otherwise well covered there; I also gave it a slightly better introduction. --LDC

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International morse code different from original Morse code

This article needs to take into account that the international morse code that is used today is not the same as the telegraphic system that Samuel F. B. Morse created (which was based on numbers). The story is to be found in William Pierpoint's The Art And Skill of Radio-Telegraphy. Sorry, I don't have time to write it up right now, maybe later. -ARJ

Trivia

Just saw this - an anagram of "The Morse code" is "Here comes dots". Well, I found it amusing... -- Jim Regan 03:17 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Elimination of CW requirement in amateur radio licensing

WRTC 2003 eliminated the requirement (made optional) for CW in amateur radio licensing. Did a re-write to incorporate this info, fill in some blanks, and otherwise do some light editing - de NG3K Bill 10:44 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Prosigns and abbreviations

Also added a bunch of commonly used CW abbreviations. Bill 18:02 25 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Clarified the difference between prosigns and abbreviations; modified the taxonomy to correspond to this; other tweaks Bill 17:01 26 Jul 2003 (UTC)

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Common cw abbreviations should just list the most important few here. Maybe abreviations could have their own article just like Q-codes. Tero 10:34, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Actually, experienced CW operators use abbreviations extensively. Most listed here are quite common and important; could be a separate article, I guess. I would tend to NOT include items that are common abbreviations outside the CW-world however (e.g. QCWA). Bill 22:58, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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..--. is given as the code for the exclamation mark, but from some searching it seems there is no official code for it. It's ---. over radio in the USA and Canada according to note 1 at http://homepages.tesco.net/~a.wadsworth/MBcode.htm - Jeandré 2004-02-20t09:48z

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Somebody who knows about these things should probably edit the prosigns comments by 'Concerned reader' into the body of the text. Looks like the comments really should have been inserted here in the discussion. --Orourkek 14:11, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

The prosign SN (VE)

The prosign SN (...-.) is in the international standard, and is actually used by some HF amateurs, though I concede that we have R and QSL for that. See a Google search to confirm this. arj 16:15, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Error codes

I hear "e e e" for "error" about 80 percent of the time. The remaining is almost always a string of continuous dits. I think that this article should mention all variants that are in use, and clearly indicate which of them is standardized by the ITU - which is the latter (........). arj 16:15, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Commat

Someone changed the "commat" to "commercial at". Is this what the official word is? I didn't see it in any of the news stories surrounding this new character.

Xoder 22:05, Mar 8, 2004 (UTC)

This is common usage in standards documents such as ASCII and Unicode, though not very much elsewhere. See for instance [1]. arj 10:15, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Morse code article space rendering problem

In the Morse code article, the american (railroad) morse characters need to render with internal spaces.

The code in place is currently ·   · · †

which is rendering as

·   · · † which has no internal spaces.

Why is the & nbsp ; being ignored? How do I fix it? Rick Boatright 14:27, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

A quick inspection of the HTML code being received by my browser indicates that the   characters are being stripped out and replaced with ordinary spaces which are then obviously being conflated together when rendered. Possibly a side-effect of the latest round of code updates which IIRC introduced a HTML-tidying stage (which might or might not be the cause before someone jumps to the erroneous conclusion that I know whereof I speak: I just guess good sometimes :-). --Phil | Talk 14:44, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)

I have been bold and suggested an alternative. See Morse code. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 14:56, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)

Arggggh Ick. Blech (Phil used an UNDERSCORE character to indicate the space) Phil, that is TRUELY UGLY. :-) Surely there has to be a better answer? Rick Boatright 15:08, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I hate using HTML, but using pre seems to do what I think you want:

·   ··†

Urgh. I feel dirty now. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 18:13, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Um, this is a bit off topic, but the HTML "tidying" seems to have broken <small> usage in tables--previously you could make the whole table small with one command, now you'd have to add it to every tr. Compare an old version of Seattle with the one right after 1.3, with now. Or, as of this moment, the table of companies at Houston, which I believe used to be all small, but now only the first row is. Anyway, my actual question is, can you point me to info about this 'tidy' feature, and/or places to comment about what it has done to existing articles? Niteowlneils 19:20, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, PRE worked here, but it doesn't work well in the tables in the code in question...

C

- · - ·

·   ··†

since (at least in the monoblock skin) it puts that "pre" box around the stuff and looks "wonky" I really think they need to FIX the HTML Tidyer..... This worked GREAT before. Rick Boatright 21:52, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Turns out this is a bug in Tidy. Works fine if it doesn't come across an &nbsp; inside a <pre> (adjusted the first line). Hope it gets fixed soon. -- Gabriel Wicke 13:45, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

AHA!!!! So, all we have to do is parse the page and dump any &nbsp; inside pre's anywhere on the page. Then the &nbsp; would render correctly inside the code. Got it. Cool. I'll try. Rick Boatright 16:53, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Saddly that appears not to be EXACLY what we're dealing with since there is no &nbsp; inside a PRE anywhere on that page. Darn. Rick Boatright 15:48, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Neither PRE nor nbsp is guaranteed to do what you want here. The best solution might be to simply color the text to background. Aliter 17:13, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Vail not inventor of code

in Vail's 1845 pamphlet The American Electro Magnetic Telegraph, Vail says that the alphabet of dots, lines and spaces was created on board the packet Sully by Prof Morse. -- I think we should take his word for it. The claim that Vail invented the code was pushed after his death by his daughter Amanda who thought that her father's genius had been eclipsed in the public mind by the figure of Morse who was a Glory Hog. Be that as it may, Vail credits Morse. Rick Boatright 03:03, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Okay, that is probably a more reliable source than Bill Pierpoint's The Art & Skill of Radio-Telegraphy. Still, the alphabetic code that Morse (or Vail) invented, is now known as American Morse code. The present version of the code (previously known as "Contintental" or "International" Morse code) was made by the German and Austrian state telegraphs in 1852, and further modified by Paris International Telegraph Convention in 1865. (This is all according to Pierpoint's book).

It also needs to be pointed out that American Morse code (the "original") did not have only a dot and a dash, but four different element lengths.

Sorry for not adding this in myself, but it seems to require quite extensive rewriting. Maybe in a few days if no-one have done it by then. arj 16:29, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

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I'm moving to this page a comment that I found in the section on prosigns:

NOTE: To prevent propagating possible error, notice the SK and BT - in fact none of the pro-signs are illustrated with an overscore. They should be. The previous paragraph explained ligation (overscore) but this is most often forgotten if not drummed into a students head. The bar (overscore) would tell learners that this character is to be sent as one character, therefore both these pro-signs are often taught erroneously as these examples illustrate. It is easy to understand why SK is often sent from a keyboard but there is no rational reason for mis-sending pro-signs manually. SK means Silent Key. When properly sent, the end of contact sounds like VA sent as one character and the dash (separator) sounds like TV sent as one character. SN is also a mis-illustration. The understood character sounds like VE run together. Morse should taught by the way it sounds and illustrated likewise. As we see above, when pro-signs are taught in an ambiguous manner, they are often mis-sent and this is emulated to the point where it becomes the de-facto norm. Concerned reader

-- Kwekubo 00:10, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Use of morse at Coast Radio Stations

It is mentioned in this article that French radio stations ceased use of radio telegraphy in 1997 and that "Morse code was used as an international standard for maritime communication until 1999". Anyhow I know that Vardoe radio as the last Norwegian coast radio station used telegraphy until 1. Jan. 2003, and that Russian Coast Radio Stations as well as many other coast radio stations around the world most probably still use it. --Jakro64 12:27, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Is SOS a prosign or an abbreviation?

This article says it is an abbreviation, to be sent with letter spacing, while the SOS article says the exact opposite. So, please somebody correct the wrong variant. Simon A. 11:03, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)