Label thoughts...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

Having now stared at (and tried cataloguing) a lot of labels, I'm pretty 
much with Rene - my first idea that they could be multilingual synonyms 
(pisces, fish, pesce, etc) just doesn't hold up... they're (a) too short, 
and (b) too low-entropy, and (c) too repetitive ["otolal", etc].

That is to say, I think that the labels somehow form an indexing mechanism 
into code tables - which are hopefully to be found elsewhere in the VMS.

But this obviously leads to two separate questions to resolve:-
	(1) where are the code tables?
	(2) what is the indexing mechanism?

The (many) pages near the end with short paragraphs, and with red/yellow 
stars in the left margin seem (to me) the most likely location for the code 
tables.

But as far as the indexing mechanism goes, I'm not sure: and I've only seen 
the transcriptions and one b&w image of the short-para pages, which isn't 
quite enough to let me reverse-engineer the mechanism (this is Europe, so 
I'm allowed to). :-)

  http://highway49.library.yale.edu/PHOTONEG/zoom/z361/z3610584.jpg

Obviously, the frequency of label prefixes like <EVA ot> make me think that 
this is at least one part of the mechanism - perhaps a page reference, or 
an indication to look for a (possibly embellished?) gallows at the start of 
a paragraph.

Also, the set of labels on each ring (I've been looking at Pisces, mainly 
because the image of it is fairly clear) seem to have some kind of 
*sequential coherence* - that is, if a label is "ot<X>...", then the next 
label starting with "ot" appears to have a higher-than-pure-chance 
likelihood (not yet quantified) of starting with "ot<X>". This would be 
consistent with document-specific tables being constructed sequentially, 
and so nearby references having nearby indices.

And the recent idea of some astrological symbols being formed of multiple 
EVA characters (Virgo, Scorpio, Pisces) could well help more effectively 
categorise the labels. For example, EVA "al" may well also be a single 
composite symbol, as could EVA "eo". These kind of simplifications would 
reduce the average (already short) label length, and may help us figure out 
the structure of the indexing mechanism.

On a parallel track, the arm and leg positions of the women may also form 
part of the index - that would be exactly the kind of thing I'd expect. For 
the moment, I can't see the link, tho'. :-(

However, has anyone explored the idea that - for the astrological diagrams, 
at least - the *star* could be part of the indexing mechanism? I'm thinking 
specifically with reference to the short-paragraph stars - their colour, 
their number of points, whether they have a dot in the middle, etc.

Has anyone catalogued all the red/yellow margin stars? The notes for them 
I've seen merely say "red/yellow stars", whereas all the astrological stars 
are indexed fully.

Seeing what kind of parallels there are between the two sets of stars may 
help us work out the correlation between them (if one exists).

Thanks, .....Nick Pelling.....