Voynich text in other characters

[Mark Knowles]

ReneZ: It seems to me, if I understand you correctly, that the issue with a Voynich transcription alphabet is that it is still tied to Voynich characters, so imposing the constraint that text matches the Voynichese exactly. Certainly the advantage of not using invented symbols is that one does not need to create one's own font for use, so there is a case for using an equivalent non-Voynich alphabet generated from more standard characters. However I wouldn't really want to use the complete latin alphabet in this respect as I think it could lead to confusion when mapping to the real alphabet; whereas by using invented symbols one is more detached. One advantage of using one's own set of symbols is that it is more compact than using a representation of a symbol like E134 as these would need to be comma separated anyway. Probably it helps to get into the mindset of the author and the process of character creation by using an invented character set as he/she would. This is assuming, as I believe, that this is a generated character set not one inherited in whole from another source like a language.

Still your point is taken and there are definitely situations where one would not want to use a made up character set. To me the ideal is a made up set of symbols which inevitably maps to an alphanumeric representation, necessary for coding purposes.

[-JKP-]

All fonts map to alphanumeric representation.

[Mark Knowles]

JKP: Yes, that is what I said. "inevitably"

[-JKP-]

An example of Voynich text that is not in the VMS font and not in EVA (prompted by a comment in a different thread, I thought it was better to have a separate thread).

This is from the dense-text folios near the end:

   


My brain tends to turn it right back into Voynichese anyway, but maybe it's of interest to some.

[Mark Knowles]

JKP: Intriguing.

[Koen G]

Not to be contrary, but I still don't see how this helps. If you want to avoid the looks of Voynichese, why not use something like EVA?

Also JKP, if I may repost your image:


Even though this is in Voynichese script, it's not hard to point out problems. In fact, I would even say that Voynichese script aids in detecting issues. Like on the second line there's a words starting with ota followed by a benched t.

[-JKP-]

That's my feeling too, Koen. If one is looking for the places in which the generated text differs from Voynichese, it's much easier to do with Voynich characters, but maybe Mark has something in mind for non-Voynich/non-EVA characters that is different from what the other thread was about. I figured it might be easier for him to express it in a fresh thread.

[Anton]

There is no such thing as "Voynich alphabet" or "Voynich symbols" - or, rather, it is inherently there, but we do not know for sure what it is.

All we operate with is our own understanding of the script - that is, different transcription alphabets.

[-JKP-]

Now I'm really confused.

I started another thread for Mark's Voynich-in-other-symbols discussion so that Rene's transcription-challenge thread wouldn't veer off topic, but now the information has been moved here.

It's really two different topics.

• René issued a challenge to try to create a cipher that would have Voynichese properties.
  
• Mark's discussion is about other glyphs to represent Voynichese.
  

They really should be in separate threads.

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Edit (addition): OKAY THANKS! I see that the threads have been sorted out.

[Koen G]

I tried to add the relevant posts to your thread, it really started after Mark's post. Anyway, this thread should be about the possible use for implementing another "cipher" alphabet.

...which I still don't understand. Would it be for a case where you want to create the equivalent of a blind study? I.e. you nor your audience being influenced by preconceptions about Voynichese glyphs nor Latin letters?