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

[oshfdk]

The original scribe (whether he was the Author or not) had to know the Voynichese alphabet, and knew what he wanted to draw in each figure.  I take as evidence for MRT certain mistakes and mishaps that imply ignorance of the alphabet by whoever traced those glyphs.  Or ignorance of the intended figures, e.g. mistaking a nymphs leg for a barrel, or an illogical half-island in a Bio pond.  I don't see how these mistakes could be explained by the Brain-To-Vellum Theory.

Note that "imply ignorance" is your interpretation, not some universal truth.

I think all of this could be just as easily explained by a person creating the manuscript directly on the vellum and not caring at all about possible mistakes and bad outcomes.

I can't make sense of this.   Unless you mean that the contents is gibberish, is that your take?  

Given that the Author decided to put the text to vellum, as nicely formatted as possible, he must have cared about mistakes.  At least gross ones, like forgetting a word or sentence, prescribing the herb for the wrong disease, etc.  I take absence of such major corrections as evidence against Brain-To-Vellum.  Namely, as evidence that that the Author first wrote a draft, corrected all such errors on it, and then just had the draft copied to vellum (by himself or by someone else, it does not matter).

My take here is that the Voynich Manuscript, as we know it, could be a draft. Written on cheap vellum for some reason. And since we have no idea about the text, maybe the mistakes in the text are corrected or highlighted. The fact that we can't see corrections doesn't mean there are no corrections. Maybe each Sh means "ignore this piece and skip to next ch", who knows.

I don't understand what you mean by "experimental pet project".  My estimate is that just the writing itself -- excluding research and thinking -- took ~1 hour per page, or at least ~250 hours.  If the Author himself was the Scribe, and he wrote nonstop 2 hours each day, 5 days per week, that would be about 6 months.  If he worked 8 hours per day, it would be more than one month of full-time work.   Can we call that a "pet project"?  Was Newton's Principia an "experimental pet project"?

Studying the Voynich Manuscript is a perfect example of an experimental pet project. Some people have full sites and blogs dedicated to the Voynich Manuscript and spend years or decades maintaining these sites. I don't think many of them would call this their profession though? And I think by the very nature it's experimental.

not something that the author intended to use in the future. And the choice of vellum over paper was just to keep the draft durable, if the project was expected to take a long time.

Isn't that a contradiction? 

Not necessarily. Suppose, the author was traveling and keeping this draft with her/him and working on it. In the future after finishing the work and then maybe hiring professional scribes and artists to create the final book, the draft would no longer be of use, other than memorabilia.

Paper can last decades or centuries, as long as it is kept dry.  See those two manuscript paper books from the 1400s that I posted recently to another thread.   Marci's letter was on paper and it is still fine after ~400 years, even though it is supposed to have been attached to the VMS for all that time.

Well, if the Author was traveling the world, maybe keeping it dry was not an option. Maybe a bit weathered appearance of the Voynich Manuscript is not from later neglect, but its original state from the time it was being created.

Suppose you started writing a book on paper while traveling and it got soaked during a dangerous river crossing and you lost two months worth of work. What would you do?