RE: VMs: New guy on the block

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dan,

Don't be influenced by anything anyone says - until one of us
publishes something of indisputable value, your ideas are valid.
Heck, we keep talking about Chinese, why not another 'lost'
language?

My problem when I have a 'bone to pick' with anybody, is that I
write the way I talk, having long since exchanged the journalistic
language of college chums for the language of the folks I have to
work with every day.  (This change occurred because of the number
of times I would passionately express myself, only to be greeted
by the reply "Now say that in English".)

In English, and with no intention of offending anyone, it is my
view that I'd rather see newbies "drift in" with their own takes,
and let those develop before they are shot down or redirected
toward avenues others would hope they take. When the human mind is
allowed to ponder its direction, it most often stumbles on things
missed by the main stream.  Go ahead and ponder your thoughts
while you bring yourself up to speed, Dan, and don't let those
thoughts be dampered by others who are quagmired in their own
research.  If nothing else, you might discover the one thing that
brings them out of their quagmire and back on track!  Free thought
must flow!

> >And thanks for the help with the EVA font. Yes, there
> are lots more
> >characters here. Now to try and get them down to
> something less than 30,
> >hopefully around 22. I already have formed some strong
> opinions about
> >this text, but there are some problems with my theory.

Some while back I posted something that demonstrated 23 characters
per page, with an occasional "single use" character thrown in.  It
was these "single use" characters that kept me from deciding
whether there were 23 or 24 in the alphabet at hand.  Gabriel
Landini pretty much backed this up with some evidence of his own
that the average 'character' count was around 23 or 24.  There is
some importance in determining whether the character count is 23
or 24, simply because, if it is 24, it would make the manuscript
most probably post-1500.  It's not a sure bet, but the
probabilities for a 24 character alphabet increase dramatically
post-1500.

EVA is not your only source for transcription data, and if I
remember an earlier post by John Stojko, he had indeed used one of
my earlier fonts for his transcription, MEVA, which no longer
exists, except in historical archives.

Your primary sources for non-analytical transcription data are
FSG, FSG2, and Currier.  Currier is by far the most accepted and
adaptable of the three.  Although D'Imperio transcribed a good
deal more than the former three, I don't include her transcription
simply because there are several 'characters' in her transcription
that she never exactly determined, weakening the value of her
transcription effort.

I also have a transcription set up at
http://www.voynich.info/vgbt/ along with a public domain font for
glyph rendition.  It is truly 'glyph-based', but also analytical,
which may not suit your current needs.  I'm not yet ready to
divulge my pizza recipe, but I have at least listed the
ingredients at this site.

I tell you all this up front because the majority of us either
disagree are afraid to commit on the most basic of principles,
that being what actually constitutes a unit of writing.  If this
were actually ever truly analyzed and decided, most arguments
would go out the window and only a few rational arguments would
remain.

We also routinely ignore empirical data, which demonstrates a
prominence of middle to late 15th century for the manuscript on
the continent, or perhaps a little later for the British Isles and
Eastern Europe.  This 'later' may be a measure of one to three
decades, depending on when the source material finally arrived.

We all put up a front to newbies as dedicated 'professionals', and
to some degree we all are.  Each of us come from different
professions, and each of us is dedicated to our own view of the
manuscript.  A handful of us have devoted thousands of hours to
the study of this manuscript.  For some this is evident in their
countless pages of statistical analysis, and for others it is
evident in their transcription and related history sites.  To
date, all of these displays of effort are testimony to resources
devoted not to solving the manuscript, but to describing it.

To anyone who would venture into the Voynich - don't be dissuaded
from your own ideas by others who have no idea.  Find your way
around the hurdles of stroke-fonts, Chinese and language
obfuscations, outlandish time placements, and put it all in
perspective for yourself, in the frame of our own knowledge.  Know
up front that none of us has a monopoly on the final truth, and
find it for yourself.  Whatever you do, don't be influenced by
anyone, even me!

GC

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