[Blog Post] MSI at last!

[Koen G]

But that would be an argument against there to be any list at all...
When the first (or the whole) list was written, I suspect that plenty of scribbling on paper would have been done in any case.

Good point - why did he feel the need to write on the actual MS in the first place? I would think that at this time in history and for a man of his position, paper would have always been on hand. If you are right that he probably practiced on paper, then why write on the MS if it is just an attempt? I find it all very confusing.

I tried some quick replacements using the columns, but it seems to be a case of garbage in - garbage out. There are manby ways to implement them though, so somebody else should try as well. One impression I get is that this operation often results in alphabetically sorted frequences. Maybe he was attempting to sort letters by their position in the word?