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The claimed Voynich page
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The Book Switch Theory
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Huth's reading of f116v: ...
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Voynich Zoom CFP
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Water, earth and air
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Can we go further?
Forum: Analysis of the text
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Yesterday, 11:46 AM
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No text, but a visual cod...
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The origin of Fabrizio Sa...
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f17r multispectral images
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Why and how the text coul...
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| interesting new ideas about f17v |
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Posted by: geoffreycaveney - 08-04-2021, 05:49 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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This is just a brief note to alert readers of the forum to the very interesting new ideas about folio page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that Koen has recently posted on his blog at the following link: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Koen's post mainly concerns the imagery of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , but his interesting new insights inspired me to take a fresh look at the text of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as well. My comments on this topic can be found at the following links on the same site and page:
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I encouraged interested readers to check out all of these new ideas and see what you think.
Geoffrey
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| Domus Aurea |
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Posted by: Ruby Novacna - 28-03-2021, 06:21 PM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (6)
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Hello everybody !
I came across a youtibe video in Russian that tries to explain the rosettes page like the map of ancient Rome, including Nero's Domus aurea.
Has such a proposal already been discussed on the forum?
I add the link You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (double the speed!)
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| Regaining the lost order |
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Posted by: Anton - 28-03-2021, 12:05 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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The VMS text is enigmatic on many levels - on the character level, on the word level, on the line level, and even on the alphabet level as well. Dealing with the word and line levels, one notices several features that are simply too well-manifested to be neglected:
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Shifting to the folio and paragraph levels, there have been some You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in the attempts to detect the structure of narration in the VMS text.
The latter point suggests that the plain text, beside being encrypted on the character or/and word level, also underwent some kind of shuffling on the word level - and this has been my idea since I finished that blog post of mine. This point is made stronger if the former three bullets are cumulatively taken into account. In fact, shuffling would explain them all right away.
Vord shuffling would also explain why the text is so difficult for us to decode: to approach vord meanings, one would strongly prefer correct vord order, and, on the other hand, it is difficult to approach correct vord order without any idea of the individual vords' meaning. Much like the chicken-and-egg problem, you see.
Now, what could have been this shuffling? Let's say we are pretty sure that it could not have been as simple (or as complex - for the medieval mind) as pure random shuffling of all vords in a folio. That's because that would have been a one-way process, and the output text would have been made virtually impossible for the reader to decode. Unless - and here is the first option that I can suggest right away - shuffling is run against very short vord chunks of constant length. Suppose you break the whole text into three- or four-word chunks, and then shuffle words randomly within those chunks. Then the plain text order would be fairly simple to reconstruct for anyone who has the idea of the grammar of the language of the plain text. Note that, in principle, the chunks do not have to be line-based. In other words, suppose e.g. that we have a three-line source text, the first three-word chunk can be comprised of the first words of the three lines, the second chunk then would be comprised of the second words of the three lines, and so forth. The shuffling is thus vertical instead of lateral. In principle, this is compatible with examples shown in the multipass thread where it appears as if first vords of lines in a paragraph were written in a single pass, and general sequence of writing was not left-to-right, top-to-bottom, but rather top-to-bottom, left-to-right - at least in part.
The second option that I can imagine is technically also shuffling from the perspective of the observed result, but from the perspective of the algorithm I would rather call it "loading". Suppose that one has the available portion of folio space (it may be as simple as a rectangle box or it may be more complex as the folio space limited by images and other portions of the text), and then he proceeds with loading that space with vords, placing vords into certain (possibly even voluntary) positions of that space. What would be the mechanisms that would allow the reader to reconsruct the original vord order? I can think of some, as follows.
a) A static pre-determined map of where exactly you should place each word of plain text. Possibly not the most probable option, since consistent regularity would probably have been discovered by researchers quite quickly.
b) A deterministic algorithm of dynamic word placing. Think of the knight's move for example. Possibly not very probable as well, since that would not explain the right-alignment feature mentioned above, unless there are some specific alignment adjustments in the algorithm.
c) The dedicated pointer. This is like option a), but the presence of dedicated pointer allows you to implement different order for each new case. The dedicated pointer is some sequence or pattern in the text which specifies where each word is located.
d) Positional markers. This is actually an extended variant of option b), only this time the algorithm is supported by positional markers in the text. The abundance of gallows which visually look like markers indeed, and also the baseline jumps of the leading o (and sometimes y) characters, vaguely hint at this possibility.
e) Each vord has a pointer in itself as to where the next vord is located. The leading or the traling character may serve as such pointer, or the gallows character may, as well. Note that the character serving as a pointer does not necessarily mean that it does not contribute to the semantics of the vord. The pointer function may just be an additional function of certain characters - or of characters occupying certain position in a vord.
f) The gallows coverage may also contribute to the vord order in some way.
So... if there is the lost order, then why not go and recover it? 
What I'm pretty sure of, is that approaching the VMS text as the simple left-to-right, top-to-bottom word flow is a dead-end.
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| It doesn't *look* like a galero. |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 22-03-2021, 12:25 AM - Forum: Imagery
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In response to a recent 'question' about the appearance of certain ecclesiastical hats.
We can start with some information here in a separate section: Ecclesiastical hat
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It specifically says: "The depiction of the galero in arms can vary greatly depending on the artist's style. The top of the hat may be shown flat or round. Sometimes the brim is shown much narrower; with a domed top it can look like a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. with tassels, but in heraldry it is still called a galero."
Given that the VMs is known to have added a touch of ambiguity, it is difficulty to see how the hats in the VMs White Aries illustration can be held to an even higher standard than the heraldic traditions of the Catholic church. That standard, from the quote above, is pretty ambiguous in itself.
Given these factors of ambiguity, absolute identification of particular objects in the VMs is difficult. What strengthens and promotes identification then is when different items have proposed identifications that can mutually support each other.
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| Linebreaks and line alignment |
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Posted by: Anton - 20-03-2021, 11:12 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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I was thinking about line alignment - in particular of the cases where lines are interrupted by images, and how vords are very neatly fit against those images, with no large gaps. In other words, the length of the vord immediately preceding the interruption often, if not always, turns to be exact fit for the available space.
In my opinion this is remarkable, but at the moment I cannot make anything of this.
Another simple observation shows that linebreaks as observed in the VMS have emerged in the process of writing the VMS - in other words, they have not been replicated from elsewhere. Let me explain this in more detail.
Where there are no images, the length of the lines in a given folio is pretty uniform - which is perhaps common for contemporary manuscripts - scribes managed to maintain the length without hyphenation (with hyphenation, of course, that's just trivial). In languages with shorter words (on average), such as Middle High German, that is easier to fulfill, and when words are, on average, longer - such as in Latin, the increasing complexity of maintaining the length of the line can be managed with abbreviation. Anyway, for now it's just sufficient to note that the VMS generally maintains the "width alignment" with the accuracy of a couple of characters - which is less than the average vord length.
Now, consider, for example, f8r, line 2.
![[Image: image.jpg?ref=f8r&q=f8r-130-490.8000030517578-1040-402]](https://voynich.ninja/extractor/image.jpg?ref=f8r&q=f8r-130-490.8000030517578-1040-402)
After sho the line is interrupted by the image. Suppose the lines have been transferred to the VMS from some original text with linebreaks preserved. In that case, the two original lines being initially of the same length, they would have been of the same length in the VMS as well, were the second line not interrupted by the image. But insofar the second line is interrupted by the image, the second line would have been longer than the first one, because it now must include the additional space occupied by the portion of the image. However, this is not the case. The second line is right-aligned with the first line.
Consequently, if one supposes that the VMS text is text copied from elsewhere, then the line breaks as we now see them are not the same (or, let's say, are not necessarily the same) as in that hypothetical original sample.
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| f71r White Aries |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 15-03-2021, 06:50 PM - Forum: Imagery
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Different pages have been posted for discussion. White Aries is certainly interesting for a number of reasons. It has a depth that has not been recognized. Because, to be recognized, something must first be known. And when it is not widely known, over the passing of the centuries, it can not be easily recognized, still history is history.
For those of the VMs era, certain parts of history were more immediate and widely known. The VMs, in its chosen fashion, combines two methods of obfuscation on White Aries to disguise heraldic identifications. Even though visual similarities have been diminished, structural requirements remain and have been reinforced, color requirements remain. It's blue. Pattern requirements remain. Traditional requirements remain. Historical facts remain.
This page should be a focal point of VMs discussion.
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| Analysis of cover attachment and VMS binding. |
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Posted by: Wladimir D - 15-03-2021, 06:11 PM - Forum: News
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First, I would like to express my gratitude to Rene Zandbergen for providing a high resolution photo of the VMS end with the lid removed. Previously, this photo was partially posted at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Some conclusions.
An error was made while assembling the cover.
Notebooks are attached with 7 types of twine.
Confirmation that Q9 is sewn incorrectly.
The Q8 was repaired by Voynich himself.
Look You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
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| Discussion of "The Voynich Manuscript: Symbol roles revisited" |
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Posted by: RenegadeHealer - 15-03-2021, 01:23 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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Matlach, Vladimír & Janečková, Barbora & Dostál, Daniel (2020). "The Voynich Manuscript: Symbol roles revisited." PREPRINT (version 1.3, 20 September — 27 December 2020; version update 12 March 2021). You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. retrieved 13 March 2021.
I'm always in awe of new quantitative approaches to understanding the structure of Voynichese. Statistics and quantitative textual analysis are probably not the only tools needed to solve this mystery, and may not even prove to be the most important ones. Even so, I have no doubt that these tools, wielded correctly, can yield a lot of valuable clues. Mathematics is not my strength, and so I found the math used by Matlach et. al. hard to wrap my head around. I'm not really in a position to judge whether their selection and implementation of statistical tools was ideal, and am curious to hear what experienced textual analysts here have to say on this matter.
On a positive note, the authors of this paper ask an ambitious and potentially helpful question: In the VMs text, what patterns of glyph occurrence should we expect to find, and how does this compare to what we do find? This question is ambitious because in such a unique and unprecedented text, "what we should expect to find" is far from clear or agreed upon. The authors compute metrics for specimens of natural language plaintexts and enciphered texts, as well as Torsten Timm's attempt at reverse engineering a meaningless VMs-like text. They demonstrate that in natural language texts, glyphs cannot be expected to recur at regular, mathematically predictable intervals. But they do exactly this in both the original VMs and Timm's synthetic VMs. The idea of the VMs being a natural language plaintext has never looked more untenable. None of this is new or earth-shattering.
The authors' goal is to identify Voynichese glyphs that might potentially be ligatures of other glyphs. They first demonstrate the viability of their ligature-finding tool on natural language samples. From what I gather, a large part of this involves comparing the observed occurrence of strings of 2~3 glyphs in a text, to the expected occurrence of that same string in a randomly generated pattern made of the same glyph set. (Please correct me on this if I misunderstand.) Thus, their null hypothesis appears to be "The VMs's text is meaningless". I think this is a wise starting point.
I'm happy to see that Matlach et al. have read, understood, and taken seriously the challenge to a meaningful VMs text put forth by Timm and Schinner. What would have been even more interesting, though, is if they had used the output of T&S's algorithm as a control when computing ngram frequency, rather than a more vaguely defined "random chance occurrence of glyphs". Because one of Timm's major points is that the arrangement of glyphs in the VMs is not random, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's meaningful. Matlach et al. do demonstrate that T&S's synthetic VMs and the original VMs are two distinct texts. But they have not falsified the null hypothesis. They have only demonstrated that Timm and Schinner's exact algorithm, as published in its current version, produces an output with statistically significant differences from the original VMs. It could be that T&S's algorithm is on the right track, but just needs some tweaking. Regardless, Matlach et al. have made a satisfactory case for a meaningful VMs text still being possible, at least for now.
A few things about these authors' hunt for ligatures make me worry. For one thing, the thorny problem of EVA [f] and EVA [p] strongly preferring the first lines of paragraphs goes unaddressed. If these two glyphs are ligatures, and are mostly confined to first lines, it seems logical that their component ngrams should occur, non-ligated, fairly regularly everywhere but first lines and labels. This is not what we find, though. The proposed components of EVA [f] and EVA [p] (EVA [id] and EVA [qd], respectively) do not occur anywhere in the text.
Speaking of which, the starring role played by EVA [i] in these authors' ligature formations is odd to me, in light of the mounting evidence from other researchers that EVA [i] is probably not an independent glyph.
Finally, the authors seem to get a bit subjective and arbitrary — "greedy" as the authors phrase it — as to which component glyphs are favored for each ligature candidate. I'd be willing to believe that that EVA [n] indeed is "a ligature of [i] + space", in other words [n] is simply the way [i] is written at the end of a vord. But I don't yet see a good reason to favor EVA [m] being a ligature of EVA [i] + [d], as opposed to, say, [i]+ [l].
I was hoping the authors would conclude their experiment by taking a reliable EVA transcription (why Takahashi?), substituting ligature candidates with their suspected component glyphs, and then performing statistical analyses of these substituted texts. I hope this is a part of their future publications.
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| f90v2 |
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Posted by: Pardis Motiee - 10-03-2021, 09:02 PM - Forum: Imagery
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I am curious about plant of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . It resembles Silk tree in my view . However I'm looking for better identifications.
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