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• No text, but a visual code

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  Antonio García Jiménez > 01-12-2025, 01:37 PM

  I think it's good that we disagree. Almost everyone thinks like you, but images speak to those who know how to interpret them, and the script is mute to those who think in terms of text.

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  Antonio García Jiménez > 09-12-2025, 10:13 AM

  Page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is a good indication of the script's nature. There we see four circles filled with glyphs. As we all know, one of the circles contains the symbols repeated four times. It's interesting, but I think the other three circles are more revealing. What we see in them is that the glyphs are sometimes alone and at other times they are joined together. The feeling is that the meaning of each symbol, whatever it may be, is the same whether it is separate or joined to others.
  
    I believe this fact hasn't received the attention it deserves. To me, it's a powerful indication that each glyph has semantic content, its own meaning.

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  Antonio García Jiménez > 10-12-2025, 10:14 AM

  There has been debate about the circle with the sequence of glyphs repeated four times, but not about the other circles where single glyphs and single groupings of symbols alternate. And it's worth reflecting on, because that succession of singles and groups doesn't seem to make sense if you think in terms of language.
  
    If a group of glyphs represents a word, whether in a natural or encrypted language, I wonder what the point is of finding a single glyph afterward, and then another word and another single symbol. And a succession of words followed by a succession of single symbols. Does that make any sense? Isn't it more reasonable to think of symbols full of meaning that come together or that can function on their own?

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  davidma > 10-12-2025, 12:33 PM

  (10-12-2025, 10:14 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.  If a group of glyphs represents a word, whether in a natural or encrypted language, I wonder what the point is of finding a single glyph afterward, and then another word and another single symbol. And a succession of words followed by a succession of single symbols. Does that make any sense? Isn't it more reasonable to think of symbols full of meaning that come together or that can function on their own?

  
  It could very well be that they are numbers. The fact that there are no numbers in the VM (apart from the folio and quire numbers, and the numbers on f49v) when it was extremely common for manuscripts at the time to have them (especially astrological ones) should tell us something about what these individual glyphs might mean. I don't think your option necessarily excludes the other, i.e. you could have "symbols full of meaning" in themselves (such as astrological notation, gradients, numbers etc...) intertwined with a different encoding system. I mean it has already been shown how labelese and the rest of the VM behave very differently. Whether that's the result of a separate encryption procedure or of the underlying properties of the encrypted text (and this is assuming it is an encrypted text), we can't really say, but speculation never hurt anyone

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  Jorge_Stolfi > 10-12-2025, 03:44 PM

  (10-12-2025, 12:33 PM)davidma Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The fact that there are no numbers in the VM

  
  In some languages and scripts there is no distinction between words and numbers.  Numbers traditionally have always been spelled out.  A notation similar to Indian-Arabic decimals would actually be longer on average, and would not provide any significant advantage for computations.
  
  All the best, --stolfi.

• RE: No text, but a visual code

  Antonio García Jiménez > 10-12-2025, 08:55 PM

  I think what I meant was misunderstood. It's not about speculating about those rare glyphs that aren't found in the main body of the script. These could be numbers or, as I believe, astrological aspects, which implies geometric relationships between celestial objects.
  
    What I'm saying is that we see many conventional single glyphs, which we do see throughout the script. And I wonder why those single glyphs come before or are followed by groups of glyphs, some of which are the same ones that appear as singles. I can't make any sense of it in terms of language. It's not coherent, and while medieval people had a different mindset than we do, it was still coherent.
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