VMs: Re: Question from a newbie

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Kevin,

> Hi, everybody!  I'm quite new to this forum, and am enjoying the discussions
> immensely.

That's the way we like it. :-)

> Please forgive what must be an ancient question, but I haven't availed
> myself of any archived messages (if indeed, such an archive exists - ???) to
> see if it has been answered already.

Archives up to 2001 are out there somewhere, 2002 I'm not sure about at all 
(though the question has been asked again recently). Sorry for not 
answering this better, but 2001 was a kind of year of flux for VMS-related 
Web presences, everything's been on the move. :-/

> The question is this:  Has any thought
> been given to the prospect that the 'codons' or glyphs represent a syllabary
> rather than an alphabet?  This could explain the terseness of many of the
> 'words.'

With such a small alphabet (roughly 23 unique characters per page, IIRC), 
the question is "how"?

I think that a lot of the VMS may in fact be a number code (similar to the 
Vatican number codes), but that would rely on figuring out how numbers are 
represented in the VMS... which is still a very much open question. :-/

Syllabic analysis was certainly an idea that was "out there" roughly at the 
time of the VMS - Leonardo (for one) certainly included a table of 
{syllables + vowels} in one of his notebooks. But I don't recall any actual 
encoded texts built on a syllabic basis, until (IIRC) a one-off 16th 
Century Spanish cipher (whose name escapes me). Bischoff's list of 
non-nomenclatura encoded medieval documents (that Philip Neal very kindly 
put up on his site) doesn't list any either.

So: it's not the most promising of places to start, but who knows? There 
are many sequences where a pair-structure can be seen emerging from the 
text... which may in fact be cipher-like replacements for other 
consonant-vowel pairs... but that's very hard to pin down rigorously. :-|

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