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

[Jorge_Stolfi]

A difference can be recognised after just a few days.

That transition on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is almost certainly a change of Scribe. (My guess is that he missed half a line, tried to "fix" that by inserting those words as line 10  before line 11 which he had already written.  He was finishing line 13 when the Author happened to drop by to check his work, saw that and possibly other mistakes, got mad, and fired him in the middle of a word (ot). Then a new scribe was hired - with new pen, new batch of ink, new handwriting, and he did not bother to finish that line and started from line 14.

But, sigh, please, it is not "this color of ink is original, this color is retracing".  Ink colors vary from page to page, among other things because the color of the vellum changes, exposed pages wear down faster, and the imaging parameters (exposure, lighting, brightness, contrast, color balance) were adjusted separately for each page.

And also it is not "lighter ink is original, darker ink is retraced".  I am aware, more than anyone else, that the width of traces changes as the pen nib wears down and is re-sharpened, the darkness changes with pressure and as the pen runs dry and is re-inked, etc.  

To say that a group of glyphs has been retraced, first there must be a sudden increase of darkness and width from the previous glyph and a sudden return to "normal" after those glyphs.  So that we can exclude that it is just the pen being recharged.   

That still leaves open the possibility of what I call "backtracing": that the Scribe himself recharged the pen and then went back and retraced those glyphs, skipping one or more glyphs in between (which would explain the sudden "return to normal" after those darker glyphs). 

To exclude that possibility, and conclude that it was true "retracing" -- at a much later time, by someone else, we need more evidence.  Which may include, among others:

• The traces that seem to have been retraced are very faint, nearly invisible.
  
• The retracing makes no sense -- invalid glyphs, nonsensical figure details, etc.
  
• The same items seem to be retraced over many pages -- breasts, belly buttons, "showercaps", ...
  
• Some plumes are traced slowly and in the wrong direction (clockwise).
  
• The retracing accentuated handwriting flaws, like an a that was half-like ei being retraced as ei.
  
• Some extremely faint items were missed by the Retracer, like the plume of Sh or the tail of y.
  

An in fact there is TONS of such evidence.  Usually dozens on each page.

I understand that many here just hate this possibility, for various reasons, and would rather believe in magical pens and inks that can suddenly switch between two or three different traces in the middle of a word, or that miraculously become darker when drawing the breasts of a nymph.   But this fact will not go away just because one does not like it...

All the best, --stolfi

Reality is that which does not go away when you stop believing in it -- Philip K.Dick.