RE: VMs: Declaration of WAR against EVA

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx>]

Well, this has certainly been interesting!

My apologies to anyone who felt personally offended, but this line
of questioning has quickly turned up some very interesting
observations on the part of many, and provided us with an
incredible amount of food for thought.  Rants can be a useful
tool, and although I do believe much of what I wrote to varying
degrees, I was very hesitant to place it in the terms I used,
fearing a major backlash in credibility (among other things).  My
appreciation goes out to those who have allowed me a small degree
of latitude.

EVA and I have been at odds for quite some time, but the
difference is mechanical approach, and I have never attempted to
discount the major effort that Gabriel, Renee and Jacque have
placed in their analysis of the glyph structure.  If one considers
the cost of every hour contributed to the Voynich on the part of
all concerned on this list, this manuscript is not only the most
enigmatic, but the most expensive as well.  Everyone contributes,
even if to demonstrate directions already traveled.

Some of the points made I have addressed in the past, and
demonstrate philosophical and mechanical differences in approach:

Renee:
there is a difference between 'transcription' and
'interpretation'.  If we have to decide first
what is one character, or one sound, or one unit of information,
before we transcribe, we would
still be at square zero today.

I respectfully disagree.  Any rudimentary examination of the VMS
text yields the fact that there are spaces between one character
form and another.  This is a consistent and inviolable artifact.
It means quite simply that the 'artist' concentrated on creating a
specific glyph, then lifted pen and changed focus to another in
succession.  IMHO, our concern should not be 'how many strokes are
involved in a glyph', rather, where does one 'focus of
concentration end' and where does the next begin?  In most cases I
have had little difficulty in determining this, but in at least
one case, there is an overlap that is of concern to me.  "am" is
most commonly written with a small space between the two glyphs,
but in some cases "am" is run together.  My concern here is that
"am" run together is also an astrological glyph.  Any working
transcription, in my view, should be able to note the difference
in the event that this observation proves significant.

Renee:
Transcription, for me, is rendering the text into an electronic
form for computer processing.
I should say, specifically: transcription of the Voynich MS. This
is different from transcription
of any text in any known alphabet.

Fundamentally, we use the same definition, although we appear not
to share the same level of clarity in our approach.  As an
example, I have documented and reported several instances of the
'ccc' group that are apparently intentionally connected, which
would in my view be transcribed as a separate glyph, not 'c' 'c'
'c'.  I see numerous events of 'cc' as a single glyph, as well as
'ccc', and even see 'c cc' and 'cc c' in the text.  A working
transcription should make note of these 'spaces'.  Why?  If these
prove to be individual glyphs, the detail has been recorded, but
should someone's philosophy say they should all be 'ccc' or all be
'c c c', a simple global conversion can accomplish this.  In EVA,
'c c c' makes no distinction, and cannot be globally enacted to
accomplish the level of detail I propose.  This is only one of
more than 50 differences we have on how precisely one should
render the text into a workable electronic form for processing.  I
am adding processing keys that allow for alternate
interpretations, and I'm doing so because EVA did not take this
into consideration.

Renee:
It is a fair complaint that Eva (like Frogguy) is probably using
several characters  to represent
units of character, sound or information. The opposite is probably
true for Currier. As long
as we remain aware of this it is not a problem.

If this were not a problem we would not be having this discussion.

Renee:
It is, in my opinion, a dream if anyone comes up with an alphabet
and claims that this is the true representation of the Voynich
language or cipher, as intended by its author(s).

"As intended by its author" is one of my quotes, to be sure.
Correct any of my assumptions if they're wrong, but I first assume
that the glyphs are text, and by 'text' I infer a method of
communication, not necessarily one of unciphered or encoded
writing.  I'm not shooting 'high-in-the-sky' and trying to make
the 'text' pronounceable.  I am simply examining it for useful and
meaningful artifacts, and making use of these artifacts to create
something consistent.  Spaces between glyphs and 'words' is the
simplest of approaches, and with an unknown, I believe it is best
to start simple.  With our old copyflo there was indeed some doubt
as to whether 'iin' was a glyph or several individual strokes, but
this has been cleared up by the release of new and detailed color
images of certain folios.  That 'iin' is a single glyph is backed
up by the spaces on each side of it, consistent with the spacing
of the rest of the glyphs.  I write 'iin' as {m}, but should you
decide to apply your own philosophy to my encoding, you can
globally do so at any juncture.  In too many cases EVA does not
allow for global interpretation for glyph interpretation on my
behalf.  Indeed, the detail I am attempting would allow you to
generate a detailed EVA by writing a simple program.  The same is
true to Currier and D'Imperio.  Translating EVA to my scheme
however requires an entirely new transcription of the manuscript.
Why would anyone object to a transcription scheme that is
translatable to all known transcriptions, and allows for a higher
degree of detail to be gleaned from any of these systems?

Robert Hicks:
The case against EVA, when used solely for computer processing of
the VMS, is quite strong.  EVA has, however, a far more important
and useful function - it allows us to communicate Voynichese
simply and fairly intuitively.  Once learned, EVA is a piece of
cake to transcribe, and a a piece of cake for others to read.
Problems like the 'linking' of <s> and <sh> are minor, and users
of EVA know about them anyway.  It might be time for an EVA
review, perhaps to increase the number of variants, but the core
of it is quite sound.

Robert, I can't see any other use of a VMS transcription other
than 'computer processing', if the goal is to find a solution to
the manuscript.  If the plus is that it allows for 'simple and
fair' communication of EVA, (meaning visual representation), I
would suggest that we move from a text platform to one that allows
fonts and other graphic representations.  Problems linking
elements of EVA together are certainly not minor when the
discussion turns from simple ideas to technical evaluation of the
script.  Ground needs to be laid and the language put in place for
these discussions to take place.  The earth is not static in
relation to the sun, rather the sun is static in relation to the
earth.  You may still call it 'sunrise' and 'sunset', from an
earthly point of view, but some other technical term must be
employed to discern between the terran and solar views.

Nick Pelling:
I think that the precise point where anyone can determine exactly
how to remap the VMS' strokes (OR glyphs) to its underlying
characters will be the same point where we can read it.

And the one who finally reads the VMS will be the same person who
has established the exact content of a 'glyph'.  Circular logic,
Nick.

Steve Eckwall:

  *KISS*  (_K_eep _I_T _S_imple _S_tupid) :-))  *KISS*


Yea - I know (yuckey-pooo!) No kiss's, _just pizza's_ lol

Entropy: ( on this list/ REF vms etc :)

MEASURE of "IT's" _RANDOMNESS_ of Character(s)!

No Steve, I don't understand what you're saying, and I doubt I
ever will.  Just thought I'd give you a spot as a reward for your
persistence.  I suppose nothing I can say will convince you to go
away?  If not, at least make sense half the time so I can disagree
with you? :-)

Nick Pelling:
EVA isn't even a syntactic representation of the VMS' text, more a
morphological (or arguably a constructivist submorphological)
representation.

The apparent semantic importance of oddities like the characters
"within" extended gallows points to mode of expressions (or modes
of thought) that other written languages simply do not have.

As per the famous elephant story, we're up against a strange beast
here - but are we innately blind, or are we merely blinded by our
tools of enquiry?

I think it's fair to say that GC believes the latter - and that's
his right. My belief is that we almost certainly have 99% of the
solution right in front of us already - people, places, dates,
context, content, etc - but that we lack the confidence to "join
the dots".

Nick, I only included Steve Eckwall's statement above because it
strikes me as the core of scientific enquiry, and needs to be
reiterated, no matter what the source.  His "Keep It Simple,
Stupid" is remarkably the best advice that I could offer, or that
anyone could follow when dealing with a VMS transcription scheme.
As you point out, EVA is a 'submorpholocial representation' of the
character-set.  Everyone has their own theories on glyph
construction, but a transcription must be simplistic in its
approach and implementation.  Mine has two simple rules -- a
'space' between characters consistutes a glyph, and a 'space'
between 'words' constitutes a token.  I overlay my interpretation
on an actual image of the text in question so future
Voynichologists can easily evaluate my own interpretations and
establish their own, based on my work.  This is science in
progress.  It is true that I have a much higher level of
interpretation of what's going on here, but I have avoided
inserting my own theories into the transcription itself.  I am
pleased you believe you have 99% of the solution - I have about
30%, but my 30% is consistent and mathematically verifiable.  I've
obviously much more work to do.

Renee:
Thank goodness we (the computer era VMs students)are not alone to
be befuddled. And even GC
did not go so far as to say that the lack of a solution to the VMs
is due to the bad properties
of the EVA alphabet :-)

Renee, I apologize if the attack on EVA was in your mind
unwarranted, but when striking out at preconceived notions, there
will always be some bulwark of knowledge that must also take the
brunt of the attack.  My attempt to expand certain levels of
thinking finds EVA right in my gunsights on any strafing pass, so
your pet project is unfortunately a target.  These are all surface
tensions, but underneath I believe we would all like to see
something far more flexible and intuitive than our present tools.
As I said, extensive and accurate EVA can be generated from my
transcription, but my transcription cannot be generated from EVA.
This places, in computer terms, EVA as a higher order language,
and VGBT a 'machine language' level transcription.  I'm doing the
work, but I would be honored if you and Gabriel provided input and
assistance on this transcription, as time allows.  Primary to me
is that it has the ability to be translated to all currently known
transcription systems and back again.  EVA will only benefit from
my work.

Larry Roux:
I added code to my to the program I sent results from earlier (re
f103v)

Interestingly I added code to count distinct words found in the
text.  I ran it first for the original code (from the website).  I
then ran it for the file I made where I changed t to ql, c's to
e's, h's to i's, etc etc.

I thought it would produce a radically different word set.

In fact, it did not.  The total word count was 449 and the
distinct word count was 325 - in BOTH cases.

It seems that the font (EVA) including glyphs that may, in fact,
represent multiple letters does not change the word frequency at
all.  This makes sense in a true language or an encryption with
very specific rules...for instance, if you ALWAYS write "il" as
"k" then the 2 are equivelent.  What this does prove (at least for
this page) is that the rules are always followed.  So, if a word
is considered an entity unto itself then the font does not seem to
matter.

I'm in absolute agreement here.  What does chang fundamentally is
the word length count and the overall character count and
frequency.  Fundamental differences I admit, but two fundamentals
that yield entirely different conclusions.

My time is running out here, so I must cut this off, though there
are more than 50 other items I wish to respond to.  Again, thank
you for your responses.  It has been most informative.

GC



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