116v: the "plummeting stone"

[MarcoP]

The dots are amazingly fine compared to the regular penwork.

It may be a silly question, but could someone used to calligraphy explain how they were made?
I should think that with a quill any attempt to "dab" the nib would have created a larger ink blot.
Are we sure we're not just looking at some sort of strange ink blot?

They do look small, when compared with the thickness of characters, but the dot above the i of mich seems comparable to me.

[davidjackson]

That one is so fine that it's almost invisible on the Yale book scans.
This throws up another interesting point - the second line has two clear diacritics (víx and alría) compared to the tittles of mich and mim on the third line.

(offtopic) Both lines have the same number of words - translation attempt? Rosetta stone?
(offtopic) Latin víx translates to old Spanish abés, which fits the word pattern if you squint. I take this line of reasoning no further.

[-JKP-]

They are quite fine, but so are the eyes and belly button of the figure on the left. I'm guessing a finer writing instrument may have been used for parts of the drawings.

Not all writing instruments had a slit to direct the ink (which can cause blobs if one is not careful), some were dabbed into the ink as needed and a preliminary dab on a piece of waste parchment or cloth can remove the excess so that the next few strokes are fine and light.

[Helmut Winkler]

Interesting. But could this indicate a different implement was used for the dots?
In which case, for what reason?

1) Why not?
2) To make very small dots, for example

I  think we should not suspect a secret behind every letter (or dot) of the ms.

[VViews]

I had quite a bit of fun practicing dotting a long time ago, although this was with acrylic paint rather than ink.
You can get dots of varying fineness depending on how much ink is on your implement, and how much pressure you apply.
So, if the scribe traced the circle part first and did the dots afterwards, there would be less ink left and the dots above would be finer, especially if he used a lighter hand for the dots.
You can actually see the dots getting finer from the bottom dot to the top one, as the hand moves up from the small circle and less ink remains on the implement.
I would say the same goes for the "mich": (dip) mi (dip) ch (dip) O....

[bi3mw]

Thinking about the "stone", I remembered this text ( Enlarged Samekh, Ecclesilastes 12:13 ) :




"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his
commandments: for this is the whole duty of man."


I don't know  if that means something or not, but in the Bible it's the only enlarged "Samekh". - In italics (manuscripts) it looks like "o":


(offtopic) Here's a little riddle: You can construct the year 1366 AD from the first word of the 4th line. Have fun.

[voynichbombe]

⁞

Vertical four dots is discussed in the unicode specification for medieval & otherwise special punctuation:

2.10. VERTICAL FIVE DOTS ⹞ completes the set of vertical dots in the UCS. We have U+003A : COLON, U+205D ⁝ TRICOLON, U+205E ⁞ VERTICAL FOUR DOTS, and U+2E3D ⸽ VERTICAL SIX DOTS. Discussion in Glasgow in July 2015 with specialists in Old Italic and North Italic indicated that five vertical dots were certainly a configuration known to be attested. They have also been attested in Runic. Proposed here as U+2E5E ⹞ VERTICAL FIVE DOTS.

As you can see, the five dots are not supported by the font in use by the forum. See:

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[davidjackson]

Have they been added to UCS yet?
I'm not aware of any font that includes all UCS codes. The forum defaults to Arial IIRC, which of course is limited to Roman alphanumeric characters and variants.
If anyone comes across a medieval web font, it would be fun to include it here.
Although this post is clearly offtopic and should contribute in the technical forum! *Slaps own wrist

[-JKP-]

Have they been added to UCS yet?
I'm not aware of any font that includes all UCS codes. The forum defaults to Arial IIRC, which of course is limited to Roman alphanumeric characters and variants.
If anyone comes across a medieval web font, it would be fun to include it here.
Although this post is clearly offtopic and should contribute in the technical forum! *Slaps own wrist

Do you want one? (medieval font)

I could make one for the forum. Although the font that was in wide use when the VMS was made (Gothic cursive) is one of the ugliest in all scribal history. The earlier Caroline writing styles were more readable and more attractive, as were the later humanist hands.

[voynichbombe]

At the moment I use Cardo. Andron includes most code points, but isn't up to date, at least when you package it from the download site, the version from MUFI is somewhat different. So if you take the latest Andron version from google fonts there are some nasty overlaps. Best coverage is probably by the the google standards, roboto or open sans · Depends, which areas are of most interest. ჻

@JKP running in open doors here, especially with smart font features, but  "HELLOW" (hell lot's of work) ⋮ sigh. It certainly needs a group of people to work on it. Anyone doing it certainly deserves a 

So we could do a split here ⟨before slapping too many wrists⟩  but for the sake, here is a big red weirdo for you:

   ξ
ϓ
Of course not properly superscript.. more here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.