The VMS ink is NOT iron-gall

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Does titanium-based ink become translucent under a certain UV especially x-rays?..

I was writing a long reply explaining what I know of titanium IGI UV Xrays etc.  But after a page or so I hit the wrong button, the draft was erased, and there seems to be no way to bring it back. 

This wonderful forum software popped up a warning every five seconds saying "draft saved automatically".  And there are indeed some 20 "editor-saved" drafts listed on my profile.  But not the one I just lost. In fact they are only a fraction of all the messages that I lost for similar accidents in the past. 

Oh well.  I can't type it all again now, sorry.

Are you 100% sure there is no IGI?

I am fairly sure -- say, 95% -- that the original ink was not IGI but a watercolor-like brown ink, a suspension of an iron-based mineral pigment in water with some binder like gum arabic.  Like all the colored inks used in medieval manuscripts, and like the red text on f67r2.

But the folio numbers are probably IGI, and I would guess that the quire numbers are lampblack (india) ink.  

And there is some dark writing scattered all over the manuscript that is probably IGI (and looks like it in the infrared images).  Namely the work of the infamous Boobs BEEEEPer.  Which apparently includes the Habsburg crown and the "showercap" diadems, the "Fallopian tubes" of f77v, and many more details -- including many BEEEPed words and glyphs on the text.

All the best, --stolfi