How fast could a scribe write a Voynich like text?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

So, perhaps producing text would take a different amount of time depending on how the Voynich was created. Here are some interesting things that could impact it, broken down by theory:

• A sloppy copy of an earlier draft. This would probably take less time, but presumably one would expect more errors being corrected - though perhaps the scribe(s) didn't care. If that is the case, what could be the rate of production that would satisfy whatever patron asked the scribe for the copy?
  

I believe this is the right option.  

And the copy is sloppy because the Scribe, while experienced with handling pen and ink, apparently had no experience with creating a book or doing illustrations.  Professional book scribes would score guide lines with a stylus, before writing any text, in order to get straight horizontal baselines and straight vertical text margins. The VMS has no hint of those, except on one page (f67r2).

The VMS Scribe made some use of a compass and straight-edge in the diagrams, but his circles fail to close and are all of different sizes, and sometimes run into the edges or folds of the vellum.  Those straight lines that should go through the center of the diagram almost always fail to do so.  He could not divide a circle into N equal parts, not even when N was 4. 

Apart from the diagrams, the illustrations are simple freehand outlines, apparently drawn without much planning or any underlying sketch.  They were not painted originally.  Thus they do not compare to the carefully drawn and painted miniatures of luxury manuscripts, which are often as good as the best paintings of the period.

So my estimate is that it took the VMS Scribe between half an hour and two hours to do one page, depending on its complexity and amount of text.  Maybe a bit more for Pisces, or the Bio pages, or heavily decorated pages like f86v4.  That would mean about 200 hours total for the whole book.  Less than 2 months if working 40 hours a week.  Less than six months if working only 2 hours per day, five days a week.

All the best, --stolfi