f114r - what happened?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Could It be that the stars were drawn before writing the text? And in order to avoid an horizontal disalignment between the star and the paragraph start the scribe would try to squeeze in the remaining text.

But the stars and parags are mis-aligned in some of the Stars pages.

Here are my notes about the parag breaks and stars of page f116r, for example.  A "perfect parag" is a paragraph where all the hints check out: the previous line is short, the head line has puffs  (p/f gallows), the other lines have no puffs, the last line is short, and there is a star nearby that can be assigned to the first line.

# Star S07, assigned to line 18, is smaller than usual, with stubbier
# rays.
#
# There are obvious parag breaks before lines 1, 4, 7, 10, and assigning
# stars S01-S04 to them will split lines 1-9 into 3 perfect parags.
# Otherwise the splitting of the remaining SPS lines on this page, lines
# 11-30, is somewhat uncertain.
# 
#  There are six stars to be assigned, so we need six parag breaks.
#  However, there are only two definitely short lines: 14 and 17.
#  Thus we will assume that lines 15 and 18 are parag heads.
# 
#  There are four more lines that end 1-2 glyphs short of the right
#  rail: 16, 20, 24, and 26, hinting that lines 17, 21, 25, and 27 may
#  be heads. There are also hints for lines 19 and 20: they have puffs,
#  and line 20 has a slightly wider linegap at right. Line 27 has a
#  puff and a significantly wider linegap, so we may assume it is a
#  parag head, too.
# 
#  Line 19 has a puff initial, so it would normally be a strong
#  candidate to parag head. However, that glyph is suspicious; see
#  below. So it is best to leave line 19 as "hinted" only.
# 
#  The vertical alignment (vpos) of stars S05-S10 is with lines 12.5,
#  15, 18, 21, 24, and 26. The situation is thus:
# 
#    111111111122222222223 Line number.
#    012345678901234567890 Line number.
#    *--*-*--*--*--*-*---- Stars S04-S10.
#    H----H-+H+++---+-H--- assumed (H) and hinted (+) parag heads
# 
#  It seems likely that stars S09 and S10 are just one line off, and
#  they should be assigned to lines 25 and 27. That given, the most
#  likely choice for the other breaks seems to be to assume a parag
#  break before one of the lines 11-14, with star S05, assume a parag
#  break before line 21, with star S08, and assign S06 and S07 to their
#  current positions.  Lines 17, 19, and 20 should not be heads, in spite
#  of their hints.  That is what was done in this file.
#
# The puff initial of line 19 is actually a weirdo: an @e with a @p
# gallows growing from its top. It seems to have been retraced.
# Maybe it was not intended to be a puff at all.


All the best, --jorge