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In general, the success or failure of translating the Voynich MS *DOES NOT* depend on the quality of the scans. If one believes that, one is just fooling oneself.
There are 200+ pages of completely legible writing in high-resolution. Some small areas are more difficult to read. Other areas are clear but we are still not certain how to interpret them because this is handwriting with all its variations.
There is more than enough information in these 200+ pages.
Whilst the current scans are very high resolution in reality I think we would benefit from still higher resolution scans and good multi-spectral scans. However I don't see them coming any time soon.
(02-01-2020, 10:15 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In general, the success or failure of translating the Voynich MS *DOES NOT* depend on the quality of the scans. If one believes that, one is just fooling oneself.
There are 200+ pages of completely legible writing in high-resolution. Some small areas are more difficult to read. Other areas are clear but we are still not certain how to interpret them because this is handwriting with all its variations.
There is more than enough information in these 200+ pages.
Well if the quality of scans doesn't matter then I guess we should all go back to using black and white photocopies. If it is not clear what is written and this is certainly the case in some instances then we can only conclude that more visual information could help. As discussed the writing is obviously not completely legible on this instance and likely many others.
I am not here to insult the people who produced these excellent scans, but the reality still is the scans could be better. I am not saying that anyone is to blame for that, but that is unquestionably reality. If you think it is not then I can only guess that you are reading the manuscript through rose-tinted spectacles through which every glyph is clear and precise.
If everything is so obvious then do tell me what the transcriptions are in the case we are discussing and how you can be so sure of your conclusions.
(02-01-2020, 10:27 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well if the quality of scans doesn't matter then I guess we should all go back to using black and white photocopies.
Mark, are you not aware that you are being unreasonable?
Saying that what we have is good enough is not the same as saying that anything is good enough.
But it's even worse.
Indeed, the B/W copies are good enough. They were good enough for the Friedmans to conclude that this is not some sort of a cipher. They were good enough for Jorge Stolfi to develop his several word paradigms and word grammars to exemplify this even better.
(02-01-2020, 10:27 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
Well if the quality of scans doesn't matter then I guess we should all go back to using black and white photocopies. If it is not clear what is written and this is certainly the case in some instances then we can only conclude that more visual information could help. As discussed the writing is obviously not completely legible on this instance and likely many others.
...
This is not a good argument. The current scans are larger than the original document and full color, so it's not a relevant comparison to the old photocopies.
The current scans are good enough. The only reason I'm interested in the spectral scans is because different wavelengths reveal different details.
The point that I am making is that scans can always be better unless we reach the molecular level, so to claim that we have the definitive scans is not correct and whilst there remain instances of uncertainty when reading the manuscript it raises the question as to whether in some cases better scans would reduce the uncertainties.
I have a simple practical question as to what some text says both JKP and myself have discussed various possibilities, so the fact there is a degree of uncertainty here understandably raises the question as to whether better scans would help.
(02-01-2020, 10:35 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (02-01-2020, 10:27 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
Well if the quality of scans doesn't matter then I guess we should all go back to using black and white photocopies. If it is not clear what is written and this is certainly the case in some instances then we can only conclude that more visual information could help. As discussed the writing is obviously not completely legible on this instance and likely many others.
...
This is not a good argument. The current scans are larger than the original document and full color, so it's not a relevant comparison to the old photocopies.
The current scans are good enough. The only reason I'm interested in the spectral scans is because different wavelengths reveal different details.
The current scans are very good indeed, but good enough depends on the specific case. In this case better scans could help, that is reality.
(02-01-2020, 10:33 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (02-01-2020, 10:27 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well if the quality of scans doesn't matter then I guess we should all go back to using black and white photocopies.
Mark, are you not aware that you are being unreasonable?
Saying that what we have is good enough is not the same as saying that anything is good enough.
But it's even worse.
Indeed, the B/W copies are good enough. They were good enough for the Friedmans to conclude that this is not some sort of a cipher. They were good enough for Jorge Stolfi to develop his several word paradigms and word grammars to exemplify this even better.
I am not expecting someone to produce better scans I can only say that they would help in the instance I am addressing and in other instances.
I am not arguing that it is impossible to decipher the Voynich without better quality scans or that it could not have been done with black and white photocopies, frankly I have no idea though I think it is very likely it could. However better quality scans help and in the instance I am looking at I could see value in having them, that's all.
Mark:
- two out of the three quadrants don't match.
- the third one you think could match but it is hard to read.
- it will still be hard to read on better scans because the original is hard to read
- even if the first three characters of one out of three matches, what would this tell us ???
Obviously as I have said what's going in the large slice differs between the f68v3 and the rosettes. In the rosettes case I think it says Asia (EVA-asal) and in the f68v3 I think, in keeping with T/O maps that I have seen, it likely contains a list of locations in Asia.
In the "Africa" quadrant they look different from what I can see, though it is possible that the EVA-k is an EVA-t as it is not quite clear what the author was trying to do on the rosettes page.
I take your point about the original being hard to read and we have the author's imprecision and time to thank for that. Still I think higher resolution could help to distinguish the penstrokes and stroke directions.
I have suggested that the first 4 glyphs in both instances are EVA-opee though JKP has said we might have EVA-opch in one instances. The question then becomes what the frequency of words starting this way is. If very common >1/5 then I really can't conclude very much. If it is much less then it becomes of interest. EVA-opee seems to be very rare. Whilst EVA-opch does not seem so rare.
Even though my analysis of other labels leads me to believe that it is likely there are a number of null words I am pretty confident these are both T/O maps
and I am pretty familiar with what is written in T/O maps. On the rosettes folio there is much less space in the T/O so it would make sense for longer words to be abbreviated. So I was wondering if we had the same word for "Europa", but in one instance abbreviated to say "Eur".
Just to note that the T-O maps of the time were not uniform and sometimes had continents swapped. I believe we discussed that on the forum.
For another note, in the view of some hints that the author heavily relied upon mnemonics (a T-O diagram being essentially one of those), the inscriptions in the sectors would likely be NOT the continents names, but rather some relevant information about the continents (or related thereto). What the particular continent is would be clear from the T-O map itself.
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