Atoms and elements of the Voynichese alphabet

[Jorge_Stolfi]

That is a nice anecdote, but not very much surprising: most major languages, even western ones, did not get a universal standardization of grammar, spelling etc. until the end of 19th century.

Whether we call those variations "errors" or "normal", the point is that the possible presence of errors may lead us to identify "atoms" or "elements" that are bogus, just products of that noise.  Like my hypothetical misreading of -in for -r  by the scribe leading us to postulate bogus "coda" elements -ir and -iir.  Or a malformed C in Ch making us list Ih as a separate "bench" element.

there is no sure hint that VMS was made by „foreigners“ or native speakers just writing in a (for us) foreign alphabet.

The misaligned lines in the "two-column" text of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. suggests that the Scribe who put the text to vellum did not understand it.  Whereas there is no evidence for the claim that he did understand it.  This is a common assumption that follows from the common assumption that the Scribe was the same as the Author, or at least part of the same community that created the text and the script.  But there is no evidence for this latter claim, either.

Is the latter claim more likely "a priori"?  I don't think so. I would give that claim at most 50% chance, for reasons that I advanced before

At all, this here is still dedicated to gain a roster of observable, smallest autonomous or atomistic pieces of this character set

Sorry if my intervention was off-topic.  But if the goal is to get to the smallest elements of the script (whether they have phonetic value or not), isn't that just the set of basic pen strokes -- e, i, the five six types of plumes/tails ( r n j m ? l , or s b d g o y ), the left leg of the gallows and the four types of right leg ( k t p f ), the ligature of Ch and CPh, and the "special symbols" ( q x v )?

All the best, --stolfi