Re: An invented language (or a hoax?)

[Zandbergen@xxxxxxxxxxx (Rene)]

Frogguy wrote:

> the effort of transcribing [the Codex Serafinianus] would not make it 
> worthwhile. However, I have a suggestion for Jorge (I think this is right
> down  his line of research).
> The writing of the Codex is extremely regular,  and clear. Say I  scan
> it.

It being printed presents a big advantage over our beloved VMs.
Does the script consist of loose characters or is it a cursive 
script like the VMs? If the former, cannot you just tell most 
standard OCR S/W that a  certain character it doesn't recognise
is an 'A', another one is really a 'b' etc, until it recognizes
everything?

> Jorge, can you figure out an optical character-recognition algorithm
> that would turn that  into an ascii transcription?  I strongly suspect
> the problem  is not so very difficult. I had given much thought to
> it for  the Easter Island hieroglyphs, which are so astonishingly
> modular, and, in my ignorance, I came to believe it could be done. I
> think it would have very general applications, too. If I wasn't so
> committed now to dispelling misconceptions about those hieroglyphs,
> I'd give  it a try.

Sounds like a good student project. To put a student on something
useless like a Voynichese OCR would be a bit iffy, but if it is 
something that could be used for Rongorongo and is perhaps general
enough to be used _also_ for other undeciphered scripts, now that
is something one would not have to be ashamed of proposing to a 
student. 
(By itself, the Rongorongo corpus is probably hardly large enough
to warrant programming an OCR...)

> But unlike the VMS, those hieroglyphs have attracted nothing but kooks
> and madmen.

Surely you jest :-)

Cheers, Rene