Is the Voynich illegible?

[Mark Knowles]

Definitely there are places where it would be of value to have more visual information about. Let's say the writings in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or many places in the MS where (it seems that) something has been erased.

Naked eye is better than any scan in this respect, because scan is two-dimensional only, while when you're looking at the object with your own eyes, you can look at different angles and see much more.

I think there is an understandable tendency to see criticism of the resolution of the currently available scans as a sign of ingratitude. The quality of the current scans is so much greater than there was before when only crude black-white scans seemed to exist. In fact I was very impressed when I first saw the quality of scans of the Voynich.

However the reality is as you say that there are definitely places where it would be a value to have more visual information; in fact I would suspect there are probably very many places where in it would be of value.

Maybe if people haven't made progress in the coming decades the manuscript will be rescanned/photographed in 3D and at a higher resolution. The scanning technology applied to the antikythera mechanism shows the kind of thing that could potentially be done and those scans have been crucial to the understanding of that object.