[split] Did the VM go straight from cerebellum to vellum?

[oshfdk]

Again, writing directly to vellum would cost more than writing a draft first; because big mistakes and changes of mind are unavoidable when writing a new book, and mistakes on vellum are hard to fix.  Possibly requiring discarding a half-filled bifolio.  Thus the fact that he was not rich only makes it more likely that he wrote a draft first.

If he was educated, but had no money, maybe he also didn't have a lot of common sense? I'm not sure what an obviously educated and maybe even well travelled, but poor person in the Middle Ages would be. No matter what the manuscript was for, there was considerable effort put into making it by the author, even if the scribe was someone else. This educated and willing to devote considerable time to this project person didn't even have money for vellum, but did have a lot of time and vigor.

According to your observations, there are various mistakes in the manuscript, like mismatched lines and miscalculated drawings, and no-one discarded these folios. Also, for what I know fixing mistakes on vellum is not very hard at all, you just have to scrape them off with a knife or pumice and write over. It appears, this was never done in the Voynich Manuscript though, why? Maybe just no-one really cared? Maybe to the original author the mistakes weren't a huge concern?

Overall, a lot of your arguments appear to common sense and efficiency, but I don't know why one would assume common sense and efficiency based approach for the author of the Voynich MS.

No, I did not need "Author different from Scribe" for that.  In my "Chinese Theory", the Author was probably European, or at least not "Chinese" -- because he invented the alphabetic Voynichese script to record the "Chinese" source texts.   The draft was in Voynichese.  Therefore, even if he scribed the vellum himself, the fact that the styles and decoration are European still does not imply that the language and source material are European.

Your argument, if I remember it correctly, was that the Author did witness a lot of oriental imagery and designs, but couldn't properly explain/sketch it for the scribe, because the author was not able to sketch well enough. As the result the scribe, who could draw, replaced all the imagery with European stock designs. If the Author was the Scribe, then obviously the Author could draw reasonably well, at least inanimate objects, and could then draw original oriental designs and leave unambiguous evidence of the oriental origin in the manuscript. Wasn't your argument something like this?

I recall a quote that, adjusting by estimated cost of living, vellum would cost the equivalent of US$2 per folio.  But I don't know how that varies with size and quality. 

I assume $2 was for normal quality vellum, not for poor quality scraps or leftovers?