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shinarit t1_iucw5vy wrote

Reply to comment by robbak in ELI5: Morse code is made up of dots and dashes. How did telegraph operators keep from losing track of where one letter ended and another began? by copperdomebodhi

You can name all combinations and then it's a regular 27 character language. That doesn't make it so, that's an abstraction. Every language can be deconstructed into binary, but Morse has an obvious ternary system that is closest to its actual usage.

Dot dot is not valid. Dot space dot IS valid. Space is not valid. Seven space is valid. Do you need me to draw up the formal language rules?

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robbak t1_iud6nvg wrote

Are they differennt from:

Dot - length 1.
Dash - length 2 (so could be considered 2 dots together).
Space between dots/dashes - length 1
Space between letters - length 3 (so could be considered 3 spaces together)
Space between words - length 7 (so could be considered 7 spaces together)

If you recognise the dot and dash as 2 different things, then should you not also recognise the different length spacings as well?

If you were considering Morse as a computer encoding, you'd recognise 4 symbols - Dot-space, or 'high-low', for a dot, Dash-space (High-high-low) for a dash, 'low-low' (following the 2 above with a trailing space) for a letter delimiter, and 6 spaces for a word delimiter. But we'd still call this a binary encoding.

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