[split] Jorge's Retracer Thread: darker ink, retracing of text and drawings

[Jorge_Stolfi]

are there any pages of the manuscript you feel were barely retraced or not touched all?

I don't think there are any pages fully in their original state.  There are only some words, glyphs, and parts of drawings.

My current belief is that an owner of the VMS, say around 1500, was quite upset because most of the text and images were fading on the way to invisibility, because of the bad ink.  So he hired a scribe (or "scribal office", like a monastery) to restore it to legibility.  These scribes (who may have been used to that sort of work) carefully retraced all the text and significant parts of the figures, with ink that closely matched the original.  

They only could not match the dynamics of the original handwriting.  Specifically, each original tail or plume was drawn with a quick flick of the pen while reducing the pressure, leaving a smooth trace that tapered to a fine point before vanishing.  The restorator(s) had to retrace those strokes slowly, which made them thicker and more jittery. They may have been conscious of that problem, because they often traced only part of the tail or plume, leaving the original thin -- and faint -- trace sticking out.  On the other hand, they often retraced plumes in the wrong direction (CW instead of CCW), with visible consequences for the thickness of the stroke. 

And they also could not restore things that had faded completely. And they would often misunderstand glyphs or details of the drawings and "restore" them wrong. Because, unlike the original scribe, they did not really know the Voynichese alphabet.  Or they would hallucinate over vellum defects and add strokes that were never there before.

Then, much later again, someone else retouched some scattered glyphs and words and figure details.  I believe there were at least two separate passes by distinct people.  The last of these (the "Boobs Retracer") also "improved" the figures with many spurious details.

So that is my Massive Retracing Theory (MRT).  

The main alternative to the MRT is the Everything is Pristine Theory (EPT), which says that every ink stroke we see today was put there by the original Scribe.  Who, if he was not the Author himself, was being watched closely by him.

I have no absolute definitive clinching proof of the MRT, but I have seen thousands (literally) of small bites of evidence -- visibly retraced strokes, inexplicable ink variations, weirdos that are obviously misunderstood and mis-restored ordinary glyphs, details on drawings that would not have made sense for the original scribe, etc.  Whereas I don't know any evidence or logical argument for the EPT.  

Thus, if I had to give a number, I would say that my probability for the MRT is now 95%.

All the best, --stolfi