The Voynich Ninja

(13-05-2019, 09:20 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.JKP: I would be much more emphatic in saying there must be a relationship i.e. in both cases we have a "4". I think when it comes to the extension on the top of the 4 I think it is most likely that is just a drawing error. Similarly if you draw enough "4"s then some of them will look like "q"s due to drawing error, so I doubt that any of them are "q"s, but from what I have seen the vast majority look clearly like "4"s. My point was that I think this question is amenable to objective analysis. Obviously this point applies to all gallows characters with a left hand top loop.

I don't think the extended ascender is necessarily a drawing error. There are places in the manuscript where there is a long vertical without the crossbar and it doesn't look accidental.

As for the q being rounded or triangular, I don't think we can assume that's a drawing error either. It MIGHT be meaningful but it also might have no meaning at all. When people draw P it is sometimes round and sometimes triangular and it doesn't matter, because the character is recognized anyway by shape and context. Some letters can vary significantly and still be recognizable. There's a difference between a drawing error and a simple variation to a part of a letter that is not specifically meaningful.

For those who are confused, Mark is talking about EVA-q.

We discussed it here You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. +++ . A bit of repetition. The symbol q and the left foot of the gallows t consist of the same elementary strokes (vertical bar and squiggle ے), which are found separately from each other in other combinations. In total, there are 19 such elementary strokes (possibly -1). See the table You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . This number may well correspond to the number of consonants in some alphabets. I think it is necessary, on this principle, to create a transcript of several pages (I am ready for this) and to analyze the statistics taking into account the omission of vowels in the text.

(13-05-2019, 11:12 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Could it be that, when you write "is", you mean: "looks like"?

I used the word "is" rather than "looks like" as it implies a much greater degree of certainty. If I carefully drew a triangle on a piece of paper then you should be able to say for all practical purposes not that it merely "look like" a triangle, but that it "is" a triangle. Now technically it would not be a triangle as no human has ever drawn a perfect straight line, but for all meaningful practical purposes it would be.

There are 100s of gallows characters with left hand top loops, so there are hundreds of potential triangles. On an aggregate basis we should be able to say on the basis of image recognition techniques that we have triangles. I can provide a more specific methodology to achieve this. In a sense I am trying to move this question from the realms of a Voynich research question to the more certain realms of image recognition problems. Similarly I would imagine that the visual identification of other Voynich characters could be put on a more scientific basis.

---

In fact it is conceivable that other visual identification of drawings in the Voynich could be treated as image recognition problems.

It might also be possible to formally use techniques like these to determine drawing errors or careless drawing by the author of the Voynich. I am keen to see if we can put the determination of such questions on a more rigourous and precise basis

It wonder if we could produce a standard measurement for the degree of drawing errors and thereby determine on the basis of such a range if a difference is a drawing error or an intentional difference such as in the case of a new character.

I think in general if we can try to use rigourous scientific techniques to answer questions, as far as is possible, the better for Voynich research. I think this will take further away from the "he said, she said and who is to say who's right" paradigm we are so often left with.

a visual decomposition made once, in line with your suggestion, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(14-05-2019, 07:35 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(13-05-2019, 11:12 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Could it be that, when you write "is", you mean: "looks like"?

I used the word "is" rather than "looks like" as it implies a much greater degree of certainty.

But it means something different.

"Looks like" is all about the shape.
"Is" suggests that this is about the meaning of it.

And it is not yet clear to me whether you are talking about shape or about meaning.

As Anton already mentioned, lots of people (myself included) have wondered if the upper left part of the p and t characters represent a q character, i.e. in terms of meaning / interpretation.

So it could be that you are talking about this as well.

But of course nobody can be certain.

ReneZ: Yes, I meant visually is the same shape, I was not referring to meaning.

However in terms of meaning I personally believe it has no connection with the counting number four IIII, nor do I believe the "4o" symbol has any numeric relationship to the number four.

It is the case that it is very common to have diplomatic cipher symbols which are made up of a number connected to a letter on its right like "o" or "p" (greek letter rho). It seems to me that this kind of symbol is not very common with the more standard alphabets we find with different natural languages which superficially have some similarities like the Glagolitic; that is why this identification of the "4" is important as it has implications for the source of the Voynich script, which obviously has implications for the source of the Voynich manuscript.