Look at *differences* between words rather than at the words themselves?

[radapox]

I especially like this kind of thinking (expressed in your first post) in relation to the VMS because the knee-jerk reaction of most of the "solvers" seems to be to assume it's a simple substitution cipher even though the letter positions and frequency are not consistent with natural language (as they stand).

That's kind of you to say. Dear me, no, I wouldn't dare to claim being anything even close to a would-be "solver"; just wanted to pick your brains on this particular pair of cents. Glad to hear the notion isn't entirely silly, and highly interesting to learn what has been done in this regard already.