Here I provide my tentative interpretation of the multipass nature of a select paragraph from You are not allowed to view links.
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The "main" text block is blue. The one to the left, the green one, is distinguished by different slope. It's difficult to tell whether it was added before or later. Judging by its ledt alignment and the absence of left alignment of the blue block, I'd say that the green block was written first, and then the blue block was written, unless there was some careful planning in advance or the green block is just a filler.
Both green and blue blocks were written top to bottom - or, at least, there is no evidence that they were written in BTT fashion.
The red block was written after the blue block and it was written BTT. It's detected with the last subline of the red block making a jump to rise above the
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chear of the blue, and then it all develops BTT as I described in my previous post.
The black block was written after the red block as if to fill the space or to provide the right alignment. But I'm not sure if it's simply filler or not.
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I think I can see this structure in other places, such as f86r. The "index block" to the left, the "main block", and the "enclosing" block to the right, whether BTT or not.
This multipass analysis definitely opens new prospects! Fascinating!
(04-05-2020, 02:59 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As for the upward-angling lines, this is not at all uncommon in a manuscript without ruling lines.
Thanks for your comments, mostly snipped, but this raises a question for me. How common is it for medieval manuscripts to not have ruling lines? Most of the ones I look at (Biblical MSS) have them, but I don't really have a feel for other genres.
From a few that I've seen, I'd say it's not uncommon. Most of the stuff I've been looking at e-codices does not have ruling lines.
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Unless they somehow escape my attention...
The VMS is full of these patterns. They are not always in square blocks, some of them are on the diagonal.
"It's not just an interesting possibility, there are many signs that the text (at least on some pages) was laid down in more than one pass. I've collected many examples and once you start to see them, you can't help saying to yourself, "Whoa, what exactly is going on here?" -JKP- voynich.ninja 29-02-2016
(05-05-2020, 12:47 AM)Stephen Carlson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (04-05-2020, 02:59 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As for the upward-angling lines, this is not at all uncommon in a manuscript without ruling lines.
Thanks for your comments, mostly snipped, but this raises a question for me. How common is it for medieval manuscripts to not have ruling lines? Most of the ones I look at (Biblical MSS) have them, but I don't really have a feel for other genres.
It depends on the date and type of manuscript. Before about 1200, it's rare to see ink or plummet ruling lines. If a manuscript written before ca 1200 has ruling lines at all, they're most likely to be blind-ruled, that is, impressed into the parchment with a tool. That kind of ruling won't necessarily show up in a digital image - sometimes you need raking light to see them. After around 1200, as we move into the Gothic period, ruling patterns become visible and complex, part of the aesthetic design of the page. But you do still see later manuscripts without ruling, like the VMS. Much also depends on the type of book. I'm not surprised that the VMS doesn't have ruling (and none is visible under raked light).
(05-05-2020, 05:01 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The VMS is full of these patterns. They are not always in square blocks, some of them are on the diagonal.
"It's not just an interesting possibility, there are many signs that the text (at least on some pages) was laid down in more than one pass. I've collected many examples and once you start to see them, you can't help saying to yourself, "Whoa, what exactly is going on here?" -JKP- voynich.ninja 29-02-2016
Yes, what's exactly going on, that is the question.
That the blocks vary in "shape" means that they are "split" across vords, not across characters. If you split them across characters it's trivial to make them perfectly square or perfectly diagonal. If the blocks are sparated on vords' borders instead, it's impossible to keep alignment unless you use a great deal of filler.
I think what can be done is to perform the multipass analysis in those cases where blocks are betrayed by baseline jumps, and then, over a good sample of collected information, look and see if some pattern is revealed. Not only the pattern, but, effectively, the rule or algorithm according to which this pattern is formed. As there is no uniform shape of blocks, there must be some rule. The question is whether it is uniform, or whether it is set up in each particular case by some markers.
I'm thinking about the implications of both multi-pass writing and LAAFU being strongly evident. What kind of written document (other than a hoax) would likely feature both patterns? A ledger, or similar sort of tabular data set, is the one that comes to mind most readily for me. I've often tabulated data in a notebook by filling in the headings or indices in a column on the lefthand side, and then completing each line as I find the relevant information for each one. When I've done this, I've tried to keep each line one functional unit, to avoid confusion and increase readability. The cost is that the ends of lines can get kind of cramped and abbreviated.
I'm working on a theory that the VMs was essentially a notebook, used by a small and secretive group such as a trade guild, to keep track of important but closely guarded information. If this is indeed what the VMs is, I wouldn't be surprised if the illustrations and the text have nothing to do with each other. The folios could have been illustrated and originally intended for use in a normal, readable manuscript about plants and stars, but then for some reason the project was abandoned (the commissioner couldn't pay for it, perhaps?), and the scriptorium was left with an unfinished manuscript. Not knowing what else to do with it, but not wanting to waste it, a group of scribes decides to use these abandoned, textless folios to tabulate some kind of information they're keeping track of, but don't want to be made public. The unrelated illustrations provide a convenient cover.
For all I know, this post is rife with anachronisms, so I'm definitely open to critical feedback on it. It just accords with my experience with notebooks and informally tabulating data, and is the simplest non-hoax explanation that accounts for both multi-pass writing and LAAFU.
Yet they took care to heavily label "irrelevant" illustrations.
(05-05-2020, 02:58 PM)RenegadeHealer Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.... a normal, readable manuscript about plants and stars...
Do you mean a normal manuscript about You are not allowed to view links.
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