Mark Knowles > 06-07-2021, 01:37 AM
Koen G > 06-07-2021, 06:24 AM
Pythagoras > 06-07-2021, 06:39 AM
(06-07-2021, 01:37 AM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I find it very difficult to read the faded smudged and often faint text. How can we possibly decipher the text of the Voynich when it is so hard to read in the first place?
Now in an ideal world we would have access to even higher resolution scans of the manuscript which might make it easier to determine what is written. However it seems very unlikely that there will be significantly higher resolution scans available any time soon. Frankly scans going down to a molecular level of resolution would not seem completely ridiculous.
Determining the precise pen motion corresponding to the blotchy characters is hard at the moment.
Aga Tentakulus > 06-07-2021, 06:58 AM
Mark Knowles > 06-07-2021, 11:24 AM
(06-07-2021, 06:24 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A much greater problem in my opinion is that certain characters exist on a continuum, notably a-o, s-r.This is certainly a problem. In the example I referred to on the Rosettes folio with EVA-asal or EVA-osal or maybe even EVA-aral/EVA-oral possibly representing the word "Asia". If that word association is correct then one still ends up with a poor crib word as we do not have a clear correspondence between word and specific well-defined Voynichese characters. With illegible words like this, one needs a much larger crib than with legible words to hope to make any progress deciphering Voynichese as one has to take into account many different possible Voynichese mappings in one's crib.
Mark Knowles > 06-07-2021, 11:41 AM
(06-07-2021, 06:24 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't think fading and resolution are the worst problems regarding legibility.It seems to me that what we are really most interested in is the invisible pen paths of the scribe, not the patterns we see in the ink. These pen paths through the touch of ink have left a mark on the vellum. Sometimes two quite different pen paths can leave a very similar ink impression on the vellum. If I write the letter "o", I can do so with a variety of different pen paths; I can go clockwise around the circle or anti-clockwise around the circle and I can start at different positions of the circle.
Mark Knowles > 06-07-2021, 12:04 PM
Mark Knowles > 06-07-2021, 01:47 PM
Mark Knowles > 06-07-2021, 02:23 PM
Mark Knowles > 07-07-2021, 01:39 PM