Need advice for testing of hypotheses related to the self-citation method

[Mauro]

Examples of selection patterns (maybe) visible in some instances (not the result of a systematic search, I noticed these similarities without searching for them):

Sequential transfers with skips:

f89r1.8:  qokeol.chol.qodaiin.chol.cheody.qokechy.daiin.ctheody.dam
          1           2            3              4             5
f89r1.17: qeaiin.cheyl.seey.qotey.qokeeol.daiin.ykhedy.daiin.dam
                                  1       2     3      4     5

Sequential transfers from one line to the next:

f103v.6: dain.shey.qokeedy.cheol.qoeeor.lshor.qoky.shedy.qokaiin.chedy.qokam
         1    2            3     4                 5     6       7
f103v.7: daiin.shey.chol.chey.oteey.lkeeor.okaiin.shedy.shedy.qokaiin.ol.chedydy
         1     2    3               4             5     5     6          7

Not exactly what you asked for, but while reading your post above it came to my mind a procedure which could be tried, as a first step.

- Scan the VMS words starting from the last word
- Search for the first word which is 'similar' to the word under consideration, always going backward in the text, and see how the resulting matches are distributed.

Roughly, something like this:

string[] text = { ... Voynich text, separated in words, goes here...  }

int source_word_index = text.Lenght() - 1;
int target_word_index = source_word_index - START_DISTANCE;

while (source_word_index >= 0)
{

  while (target_word_index >= 0)
  {

     string source_word = text[source_word_index];

     if ( is_similar(text[target_word_index], source_word) )
     {
          // match found, log the result
         target_word_index--;
         break;
     }
     target_word_index--;

  }

  source_word_index--;
}


Of course one must define what 'similar' means and write the is_similar() function, I guess one could start from what Torsten did in his software.