The illustration http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/image:SOS_morse_code.png exhibits a very common misinterpretation of the international distress signal, namely that it is composed of a three-letter code S+O+S sent as separate letters. Such use is very, very wrong. For example, it will NOT trigger any automatic distress signal receieving apparatus.
Unfortunately there are a great number of worldwide links, that point to the incorrect illustration.
The correct distress signal is 3 short code elements immediately (no blank separator!) followed by 3 long code elements immediately (no blank separator!) followed by 3 short code elements. The professional representation of this is <SOS crowned by overline>. In many situations it is tricky or impossible to create an overline, so often this is replaced by underlining, which is easier to create. In so doing the non-professional reader might be misled to interprete this as just highlighting a three-letter code. Unfortunately this maltreatment is spread worldwide.
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion
I have been building up content on representations of Japanese: Signal flags, semaphore, braille, sign language and Wabun code - the Japanese version of Morse code. Since Japanese has 46 "letters" in its basic kana, extensions are needed beyond the baic 26+10 of Morse code. I've found audio files for all but one of the inevitably longer sequences - dash.dot.dot.dash.dash NW or DM. So I'm hoping someone might be able to help me out with two things that I've run into during this experience:
Get a clean copy (see L_morse_code.ogg right for an example) of every permutation of sequences up to a certain length - I only need 5, but this could be a good project if someone wanted to go higher to help support other content creators in other language wikis.
There should be a listing somewhere of the file links based solely on the Morse code sequence structure, since the file names are based on what they represent.
I completely understand the "if you can't find it, make it" ethos on Wikimedia projects, but I have zero experience or knowledge when it comes to building audio files like this and would greatly appreciate any help.
So I've done the work on #2, above, which you can see at Morse code#Sound files by sequence. I very well could have missed some files somewhere, so please add any missing ones you know of. If anyone has a better way of presenting this content, please use what I've started to get it going. Running through the listing, we have no more than 5 missing five sequence sound files, with at least 27 existing; and no more than 50 missing six sequences, with at least 14 existing. In total, that means we have sound files for at least 71 of the 126 sequences of length six or less. Vanisaac (talk) 15:57, 22 April 2020 (UTC)Reply
