VMs: Re: A theory about Wierdos

["John Grove" <John@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Good approach Glen,

    The wierdo's, gallows, and split gallows are oddities that do need some
form of logic to their use in my opinion. I don't think they are purely
decorative versions of other characters. Following your hunch that they tell
the reader to read from another chart - or that the character is foreign to
the normal script - or that the character is doubled -or.... is indeed a
good place to start trying to figure out what these characters are doing.
Not that it's simple, but it's good to start with the oddballs and work
one's way back to the main script after studying how the oddballs affect the
text around them.

> But is there evidence to support human interaction with the
> system?  I believe so.

    The placement of the wierdo's shouldn't be overlooked as decorative and
thus I would agree that thought went into the use of these characters with a
particular purpose in mind. Whether to encrypt (change a table), shorten,
accentuate a point, double a letter, combine letters, etc... there should be
a point to the use of such oddities.
> This also applies to the "in, iin,
> iiin," set and all its variables, as well as the
> various marks over the "table" character.

    Not to mention the c, cc, ccc combos as well...

> standard characters with wierdo marks, consider
> for a moment folio 49r, which has a series of
> wierdo characters, not the least of which are a
> pair of "4o"'s with tear drops drawn above them.

    These same characters 'forced' me to believe in separated ligatures
being
the 'second' stroke of a character. Keeping in mind that you don't like
breaking things into tiny stroke orders, but at the same time noting that
you're seeing the oddballs in a slightly different light than the regular
text - the end-stroke reasoning I've presented before seems to have some
degree of merit with your 4o with teardrop and as you mentioned applies to
in, iin, iiin as well.  So, back to the stroke order concept for a minute,
where the end-stroke that creates the 'n' character is separate from the
initial strokes of 'i' or 'c' - the possible combinations are then '@',
'a+n', 'a+i+n', 'a+ii+n', etc... and an equal set with 'c' that does exist
as well.

> If I am correct in my assumptions, the basic
> Voynich alphabet would be around 23 characters,
> with an additional 13 to 16 characters being

    So, 23 characters are the 'default set', with 13 - 16 'shift-alt set'?

John.