RE: VMs: Tironian notes

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxx>]

NIck wrote:

> I believe that the structural difference between
> occurrences of "4" and
> "4o" is a key indicator of what is going on "under the
> hood" of the VMS'
> coding system. To my eyes, they function as autonomous
> letters - in the
> same way that "o8" and "89" function as autonomous
> letters, for example -
> which is why I've moved so strongly towards reading the
> bulk of the text in
> pairs.

The VMS glyphs don't have to represent numbers in order to operate
in pairs.  Vig and Selenus cover several double letter ciphers
that use 'standard' alphabets.

I guess my problem here is that reading the VMS symbols in pairs
effectively reduces the transmittable information by half, does it
not?  The 'words' are "relatively" close to Latin in their present
form, but if it takes two glyphs to make an information bit,
wouldn't the words have to be about twice as long as the
underlying language?

You can have all sorts of theories about artificial word division
and so forth, until it comes to pages with labels.  The labels are
approximately the expected necessary length to communicate
information, and halving this would render the labels
'ineffective'as information carriers???
The one on the top right of f89r1 for instance, is about the right
length for "serpentia", which would seem to be indicated by the
snake root in the drawing.  Cut this in half and you can barely
fit in "snake"!  It's little things like this that add up and
leave me with the distinct impression that each glyph is a
transmission unit.  Any thoughts?

GC

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