[Blog Post] Was the Voynich text generated by using the self-citation-method?

[RenegadeHealer]

The writer in Timm's theory could have written words with any structure whatsoever, yet they quite consistently kept to the same structure ... what are the rules and why do they exist?

The rules to modify a source word normally don’t affect the order of the glyphs. This is one reason for the observation that the words in the VMS share the same rigid word structure. Additionally, for a text created by self-citation it appears as a logical assumption that the scribe also used aesthetically motivated design rules for glyph selection, in order to harmonize the overall appearance of the text. These rules specify when two glyphs may follow one another. Currier wrote: “There seem to be very strong constraints in combinations of symbols; only a very limited number of letters occur with each other in certain positions of a ‘word’.” Coarsely speaking, the shape of a glyph must be compatible with the shape of the previous one, and is also influenced by its position within a word or a line. (Timm and Schinner, 2020, p.10. Emphasis mine.) 

Just to play devil's advocate, what I hear Torsten Timm saying here is that the rigid vord structure was designed so that, with minimum time and effort, any vord could be easily changed into another one, without making its similarity to its predecessor obvious. I could draw analogy to an improvisational jazz musician, who is given a time signature and a key as a rigid set of rules, and once practiced at playing an instrument within these constraints, can rapidly vary the melody and still sound good.

Another interpretation of "aesthetically motivated design" I could see, is creating and sticking to a strict set of glyph placement rules in order to give the impression of "too orderly to be nonsense".

But you do make a good point: Torsten's description of his autocopy algorithm is weak in its explanation of:

1. Why this particular glyph set, and these specific rigid rules for arranging them? Why would a whole new writing system even be needed to write gibberish by the autocopy method that looks convincingly like real language? It seems like more trouble than it's worth, and not a time-saver.
   
2. How is the autocopy algorithm executed? One vord at a time left-to-right across a line, or pepper a page with variations on one self-cited vord, and then repeat until all the lines are filled in? This isn't clear at all from his description, and I have a hard time imagining either method being particularly quick, without a lot of advance practice.