I've never met anyone else on this public forum who thinks he can tell other people what they may and may not say. Don't ever tell me what I can or cannot say. If it were your forum, it would be different, but it's not. You don't set the forum rules. I am permitted to express my opinions (within forum rules) regardless of who starts the thread, and so are others.
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Now back to business... since you didn't answer my question (do you want more samples?), I will offer this information instead since it is directly relevant to your question and will probably also be of interest to other forumites:
- The IDCs use the number 4 by itself and in conjunction with a number of other characters, including a +, an "o", and a Latin "-is" abbreviation (and a number of others). In the Tranchedino version, the stem on the 4 is not long, but since he copied these characters from various letters, there's no guarantee that all the scribes wrote it this way.
- Most of the VMS stems are long and the 4 shape is not exclusively combined with "o", it is sometimes together with other characters (but it is usually "o").
- The FDC uses a long number 4 by itself and combined with other letters, some of which are "o". When it is by itself, the 4 means "a". When it is combined with "o" (4o), it means "p". Like the IDCs, the FDC is a substitution cipher, but a more simple one. Like the IDCs, it uses letters (mostly Latin and Greek), numbers, and a few astrological symbols.
So...
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Now back to business... since you didn't answer my question (do you want more samples?), I will offer this information instead since it is directly relevant to your question and will probably also be of interest to other forumites:
- I have the Italian Diplomatic ciphers open on my lap.
- I have the Yale VMS facsimile open on my desk.
- I have a French Diplomatic cipher from the 16th century in front of me on the screen.
- The IDCs use the number 4 by itself and in conjunction with a number of other characters, including a +, an "o", and a Latin "-is" abbreviation (and a number of others). In the Tranchedino version, the stem on the 4 is not long, but since he copied these characters from various letters, there's no guarantee that all the scribes wrote it this way.
- Most of the VMS stems are long and the 4 shape is not exclusively combined with "o", it is sometimes together with other characters (but it is usually "o").
- The FDC uses a long number 4 by itself and combined with other letters, some of which are "o". When it is by itself, the 4 means "a". When it is combined with "o" (4o), it means "p". Like the IDCs, the FDC is a substitution cipher, but a more simple one. Like the IDCs, it uses letters (mostly Latin and Greek), numbers, and a few astrological symbols.
So...
- All three kinds of documents include the "4" shape.
- All three documents have the "4" followed by a number of different characters, but the VMS is more often in front of "o" than the two cipher groups.
- Only the VMS has the "4" shape primarily at the beginnings of tokens. In the two cipher groups, the 4 moves around within words.
- The stem of the 4 is long in the VMS and in the FDC (but keep in mind that the FDC is 16th century, so it is later than the VMS). The stem is not as long in the Italian ciphers transcribed by Tranchedino (but this may be related to how he writes it and might vary in the various diplomatic documents).