Anton, I broadly like your idea of narrative structure for herbal pages. Though is there an indication that it would be true for typical herbals in known languages?

(02-02-2016, 07:43 PM)Emma May Smith Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Anton, I broadly like your idea of narrative structure for herbal pages. Though is there an indication that it would be true for typical herbals in known languages?

The narrative structure of herbals at the time tend to fall into a few categories.

• Those which mostly listed the names of the plants in various languages (many of the early herbals did this).
  
• Those which described the plants so they could be identified in the field.
  
• Those which classified the plants (e.g., hot or cold) and briefly described for what they were mainly used.
  
• Those which gave instructions or "recipes" for using the plants (e.g., mix with a, b, c, and 450 ml of d).
  

There are, of course, hybrids of these, but most of them shake out into these categories. Some would discuss one aspect of the plants in one section (e.g., identification) and write about other aspects (e.g., pharmaceutical recipes) in another. There are also some that list healing charms, but they are not as numerous as the others (although a charm or two is included in a number of them).

There are some that include some of the mythos associated with plants but as far as I can tell, these are not in the majority. Most of them appear to have a practical nature, probably because plants were medicine before we started synthesizing drugs.

(02-02-2016, 04:27 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Marco:

Simple substitution cipher stats and patterns would be the same as for a natural language. Since the VMS is highly unlikely to be a natural language, it is not a simple substitution cipher neither.

Thank you Anton, I did not notice that you wrote you don't believe it to be a natural language. 
This certainly clarifies your point of view