Re: VMs: qo-words

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Gabriel,

At 10:34 10/03/03 +0000, Gabriel Landini wrote:
> I have expanded a bit on the discrepancy of the frequencies of q- and o-
> starting labels by analysing the the frequencies of the words.
> I found a few interesting features that point to <q> as a "detachable"
> character.
> Any comments and corrections are appreciated.

You could alternately look at <q> (as I do) as an "attachable" character, 
ie a "shift"-character that changes the interpretation of the rest of the 
token. This would be consistent (for example) with the general 
"VMS-as-embellished-number-code" hypothesis, as that would require a 
separate "shift" code to denote large numbers (to differentiate them from 
code indices).

I found the most interesting thing is that you the data would seem to 
suggest that the <qo> in <qoteedy> is, at heart, *non-glyphic* - that is, 
that rather than the <qo>-centric decomposition...

        <qo> + <teedy>

... it would seem more (statistically) likely to be....

        <q> + <oteedy>

My eye now readily decomposes <qoteedy> into <q> plus a number of 
high-frequency glyph pairs:-

        <q> + <ot> + <ee> + <dy>

This might further point to the ligatured <qo> glyph as being basically 
steganographic, designed specifically to throw code-breakers' attention 
away from the <ot> pair following the <q>.

The implication (which perhaps should be tested next) is that any common 
glyph-pairs appearing after <q> - ie, reattaching the frequently-ligatured 
<o> forward to the next character along, and not backwards to the preceding 
<q> - may well form the core of the VMS' internal numbering system.

One yet further inference might be that, as this would be a far more 
refined version of the "4"/"4o" alphabet-hiding mechanism used in various 
North Italian codes circa 1440-1455, it would almost certainly post-date 
them, while still having been devised by the same code-maker: all of which 
would date it to 1455 or later (my two current hypotheses are 1463 and 1465).

Interesting! :-)

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

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