Expressing any Unicode character using Morse code

[Mark E. Shoulson]

Yes, compactness is of great benefit in Morse Code.  To such an extent 
that I find myself thinking that "expressing any Unicode character" and 
"Morse Code" are somewhat at odds with one another. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code_for_non-Latin_alphabets speaks 
of non-Latin alphabets using their own encodings of many of the same 
dot-dash sequences that ASCII uses for non-ASCII characters.  I guess in 
a way it's rather like the old ISO-8859 code pages: you use the same bit 
sequences but they mean different things depending on what alphabet 
you're speaking.  A big part of Unicode's purpose was precisely to 
supplant ISO-8859 (right?) so that each character could stand on its own 
and not have to have code-page metadata attached to it.


I can sort of see some logic to allowing the same for Morse Code, but 
again, Morse Code needs its compactness and needs to be short enough for 
humans to send and receive.  The "code-page" approach sounds eminently 
practical and usable for most purposes for Morse Code.  Still, what 
you're talking about is some kind of "unicode escape sequence" that you 
can use for one-off insertions of a character here and there (one 
hopes), and I can see some utility to that.  But who gets to decide how 
that's done?  Unicode doesn't control International Morse Code.  
Probably you need to take this up with the International 
Telecommunication Union to make it official, or else find a bunch of 
Morse Code enthusiasts who'll use it unofficially until it becomes a de 
facto standard.


Note that there are already Chinese and Japanese telegraph codes (about 
which I know nothing, but Wikipedia does), so there are already Morse 
Codes that have to represent largish character sets.


~mark


On 8/7/23 17:51, Sławomir Osipiuk via Unicode wrote:
> Compactness is of great benefit in Morse Code.
...
> On Tuesday, 01 August 2023, 10:16:41 (-04:00), William_J_G Overington 
> via Unicode wrote:
>
>     https://punster.me/serif/viewtopic.php?id=455
>
>
>     William Overington
>
>
>     Tuesday 1 August 2023
>
>
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