The gallows intrusion, the baseline jumps and multipass

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Here I provide my tentative interpretation of the multipass nature of a select paragraph from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. based on the changes in baseline trends.

I thnk that the apparent breaks in the baselines are an artifact of (unconscious) attempt to fit straight lines to them.

In the picture below, I have tried to trace the actual baselines character by character:

   

It seems that the baselines are quite irregular, with shifts within words about as big as those between words.  

To me the pattern suggests that the scribe just tried to write each word W1 so that the distance between its baseline B1 and the baseline B2 of the words W2 just above W1 was about the same as that between B2 and the baseline B3 of the words W3 just above W2.  But this strategy resulted in the baseline spacing being generally smaller on the left side of that parag than on the right side, so that the baselines became increasingly crooked.  

When he got to line 8 he realized the problem, so he tried to correct it by opening up the lines on the left side, until the baselines were more or less straight again.

All the best, --stolfi