Is the Voynich illegible?

[Mark Knowles]

I don't think fading and resolution are the worst problems regarding legibility.

It seems to me that what we are really most interested in is the invisible pen paths of the scribe, not the patterns we see in the ink. These pen paths through the touch of ink have left a mark on the vellum. Sometimes two quite different pen paths can leave a very similar ink impression on the vellum. If I write the letter "o", I can do so with a variety of different pen paths; I can go clockwise around the circle or anti-clockwise around the circle and I can start at different positions of the circle.

So it seems to me that we are really trying to deduce is which pen paths produced a given Voynichese word from the marks left in the ink on the vellum. If we know the pen paths then we have a much better basis for reading the Voynichese text.

On the question of resolution this can help distinguish between dirt or other discoloration and ink. Even just a small dot of ink can give an insight into the pen path that produced that text.