Voynichese is a numeric cipher?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

The reason seems to be that, if it was merely a plain text in a funky alphabet, (1) it would have been cracked 100 years ago, 

Not if it was a natural language that the person did not know.  I don't read Russian.  I don't care what alphabet or font you use, I don't read Russian.

That quote is what I think "everybody" thought.  Not what I think.

I fully agree with your first sentence (and even said just that myself, recently, on this forum).

But many of the people who tried to crack the manuscript in the last 100 years could read Russian.  Starting with Wilfrid himself, and then with the Bletchley/NSA people.  And many more probably could recognize a text as being in a Slavic language even without understanding it. 

Hence my claim that, if it was a plain text in any "European" language (including Russian, Finnish, Basque, Turkish, Arabic, and Hebrew) , just in a funky alphabet and orthography, it would have been cracked long ago.

All the best, --stolfi