[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

VMs: Re: Quills & Hands A & B...

Hi Bruce,

I have always wondered if it couldn't be something as simple as two scribes
copying text from a draft version and inserting some null characters on the fly
as they copy. Differences in their preferences in the choice of nulls and the
frequency of inserting them could account for the difference of the hands. The
intermixing of hands by page, but never (I believe) within a page could be the
result of each scribe grabbing a page or two of the draft, copying them, and
coming back for more when he is done.

This falls into the category of the "flexible code with room for scribal variation" idea. Perfectly reasonable (I've proposed it myself, naturally). :-)

One way to test this hypothesis, it seems to me, would be to look for a small
set of characters (the nulls) which, when they are deleted, cause text of both
hands to have similar characteristics (e.g. word length, letter frequencies,
word frequencies, etc.)

I tried some testing along these lines a few years ago, but didn't find
anything conclusive. With today's fast PCs, though,  it should be possible to
automate such a search, I think - maybe I'll take another look at it.

Sounds like a good test to run - a definitive test to separate the two hands (apart from purely visual considerations) would be a big step forward. Any signs of common framework between the two hands would also be good to know - getting two people to write identical gibberish would be hard to achieve. :-)

Similarly: being able to strongly implicate more than a single person in the production process would help move it away from a "lone gunman" / "lone madman" scenario - which are always a big favourite on the Internet. :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....