RE: VMs: Image Source, Accuracy of Transcriptions

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey all,

One of my echos is still running I've discovered, but after wading through
about 300 backlogged messages, I'm about to retire - seriously! :-)  Anyway,
thought I'd log back on and add a few more thoughts, nothing serious.

Askham's Sphearae, Sacro Bosco, MSS 337 - just got it in the mail this week,
which is one of the reasons I need some time away.  It's a lot to
transcribe, and I need the linguistic stats from this book in a very bad
way.  It's a fascinating book - a lot of features I'd consider VMS-like, but
nothing concrete I've noticed.  Poor artistry on VMS scale, a mixture of old
and neo arabic numerals, like the VMS, choppy line structure, scattered
hand, strange stuff.  Some of the wierdest spellings and English I've ever
seen.  By my calculations Anthony Askham was 16 or 17, 18 tops when he
performed this translation.  The artistry sucks, no doubt.

Never fear.  One of the things I've planned from the start is to add this to
my internet collection of Askham books.  This will take a bit of time, but
it is an important piece of VMS trivia and needs to be made available, just
like Strong's notes and letters.  (Yes, I have requested permission, and
that is always the "long wait" part of any project involving Beinecke's
material.)  No Nick, I'm not going to comment on its features and the
foldout until I analyze every page.  No stray VMS scribbles in the
marginalia however, first thing I looked for.  Oh well.....  how about
Ryland 228, get to view it yet?

On an offshoot - we now have two astronomical books with "foldout maps" from
the 15th/16th century.  Any others we can add to the list?  I haven't run
across any, but the idea should have come from somewhere.  There's a model
out there we haven't seen yet?  BTW, the volvelles are apparently an
addition to the original Sacro Bosco work, and while this is not a new thing
in Sacro Bosco translations, there's new material added here, as well,
mostly what can be considered "commentary".  I have Sacro Bosco's "Sphaera
Mundi" in Latin in 1478 and 1482 editions, and his "Sphaera Materialis" in a
1485 edition, as well as his "Algorismus" from 1501.  None of these have
"foldout maps", nor do they have operating volvelles. What is interesting is
to view how the young Askham depicts places, such as Jerusalem, by drawing
buildings, castles and churches that he's never seen.  One or two remind me
of crude copies of artist's drawings I've seen before.  (Had to throw in the
"castles" comment just to get Nick's goat! :-O )  Either I'm a very big
spender and like to invest in very rare books, or I'm a rather poor
simpleton who knows how to search http://gallica.bnf.fr/ for titles I'm
interested in.  "Sacro Bosco" is a good search key in this instance.

You were all debating "John of Hollywood" and its orgins as it relates to
Halifax.  I've nothing new to add to that, though it does get the thought
processes going.  For instance, what does the term I just used mean -
"Simpleton"?  To us moderns it's someone who is simple, not graced with
higher thought processes.  But what was a "simple"?  It was a plant, and
what was the art of "Simpling"?  The art of picking and preparing plants.
Does this have anything to do with the development of the term "simpleton"?
I wonder.

Larry's stats are just in, while I've been mulling a response to Jeff's
efforts.  Larry, I'd appreciate it if you'd add this page to your list
www.voynichinfo.com. These are all the images I've extracted from various
sources, save one source, from whom I'm awaiting permission before releasing
the images, mostly color!!!!!!  I'm sorry to say I'm having problems with
Ken's PDF file.  Not only does my server(s) continue to time out on such a
large upload, but once I got it in place on one server, three tries on high
bandwidth and I still couldn't get a successful download.  The file is
simply too large.  This current layout is the best I can do, and the pages
are not compromised by further compression as pdf usually does.  I'm sure I
have a few images here some of you don't have, and if you have any I don't
have (high quality or color only), please let me know so they can be added.
I hope we can add several new color scans to this in the coming year.  All
my postings are, as usual, public domain, unless someone objects in some
way.  A any reposting of images should carry the necessary Beinecke Courtesy
line, no matter what the origin of the image, and if you're kind, you'll
once in awhile offer a link to www.voynichinfo.com.

Now to something near and dear to my heart - cholesterol - er, maybe I'll
just stick to .... bad choice of words... maybe I'll just comment on glyphs
and such.

Jeff - what are you doing Jeff?  Seems like I asked this before.  We all
have other fish to fry than to work out silly puzzles you've created in
late-night madness.  What are you thinking?  Join the National Cryptogram
Association if you like to throw puzzles at people.  Rene is one of the most
respected people around this block, one of the authors of EVA (my most
despised transcription, no offense to the authors), and even HE says you're
pissing on a dead tree and hoping it will grow.  You say "The best minds
have floundered on this for years", and to that I say, the best minds
usually have more important things to do, so we're stuck with the likes of
you and me. I'm not so sure about you, and I'm really worried about me, so
where does that leave us?  :-()

Why do you think "the best minds have floundered"?  It's really simple.  No
one can get a grip on what a unit of information is in the VMS.  If you
think for a moment this doesn't matter, you're doomed to failure from the
start - we all know it, and we are all willing to sit back and watch you run
the maze.  If it's language, then it shouldn't matter that much, but if it's
crypto - and what you're doing is crypto - then determining the unit of
transmission is the heart and soul of the effort.  Until you have done this,
you're just flapping in the wind.  Larry's stats just in are apparently
based on EVA.  High i proportion, separate n scale, etc.  Other than for the
most general purposes, what good are statistics that do not seek to
determine the unit of informational content?  It doesn't matter?  Get real.

Let's say the author used a simple number progression, and applied it to
'8am 8am'.  In EVA, this is 'daiin daiin'.  So the author used 8am 8am and
applied 123456, but you read daiin daiin and write 1234567890.  By
misreading one single glyph, "m", as "iin", you've added so many new
elements you have no way of recouping the original thoughts and methods of
the author.  Since the 'i' stroke is also an individual element, you have no
way of isolating it, or distinguishing the individual element 'n' from any
other legitimate use.

My long-standing argument has been that it is not the best approach to
second-guess the author by developing transcription schemes that do not
reflect the connectivity and association visible in the text.  In EVA I can
record an 'a' with the characters 'Ei', the E capital allowing for
connectivity, if I read the directions correctly.  It hasn't been done this
way, but it can be done this way, as I understand the directions.  I don't
see any difference between recording 'a' as 'Ei' or recording 'm' as 'iin'.
This would make "8am" in EVA, 'dEiiin', or in uncapitalized, 'deiiin'.  How
does this work into your crypto? :-0  Look at Rene's pages, he used CURVA
for his stats - what should that tell you, Jeff?

Recently I posted a list of 21 glyphs with high enough numbers that you
could be absolutely certain they were individual units of transmission, and
a few others below these that were also most certainly individual, though
rare.  I've gone on at great length about the "sets of four" in VMS glyph
analysis.  I have preached, bitched, sympathized, attacked, harrassed,
harangued, and openly insulted EVA without result.  I've begged people to at
least revert to Currier, and what responses I receive are usually explained
in EVA.  It wasn't a big deal when "Language Tech" had the field, but now
the "Crypto Wierdos" are finally coming out of the closet, it's deal enough.

To be fair, EVA has built-in mechanisms that alleviate many of my problems
with its source material, if only these mechanisms had been enacted.  Take
for instance the "cc" problem.  In
EVA the connectivity can be demonstrated by "Cc".  I assume the 'm'
connectivity could be demonstrated by "IIn" as well.  Point me to a
transcription that contains these finer points and I will say that EVA has
done its job.  To date these nuances don't exist in EVA transcription, and
therefore, EVA is a failed transcription system, having not accurately
presented the data it sought to portray.  Currier on the other hand, was
simplistic, ignoring certain nuances that may or may not be important.  The
middle ground is a transcription that demonstrates all relevant nuances of
the data within well-established limits and design.  With the simplistic
Currier, one has to go through and correct minor differences.  With EVA, one
has to totally retranscribe the text in glyph fashion.  It occurs to me that
there is a transcriptional set of rules by which one can transcribe the text
and not have to go back and retranscribe every time the mindset changes from
linguist to crypto or back again.

What you're not aware of Jeff, is that you are the embodiment of a
prediction I made concerning this matter some time ago, but don't feel
special, you're not the first, and you won't be the last by a long shot.  I
predicted that if EVA took center-stage over efforts to improve earlier
transcriptions, it had the potential to misguide the thinking of an entire
generation of VMS enthusiasts who were never exposed to earlier
transcriptions before coming in contact with EVA.  Try to find Currier on
the net - it's out there, you just have to bust your balls to find it.  And
forget Stolfi's interlinear - he's ripped the heart out of every other
researcher by transliterating their works into EVA.  Things simply don't get
more bastardized than that.  They didn't see "daiin", they didn't write
"daiin", so why the f#$k would you have others believe they said "daiin"?
That's no interlinear, that's a blatant misrepresentation of the conceptual
works of some very good people.  Just my opinion.

But why cry over spilt milk?  We have Stolfi's Interloper, Takeshi
Takahashi's uncapitalized EVA transcription, better viewed as a copy of a
copy of a copy of a bad copy copied on an old xerox, and in the mean we've
lost all touch with Currier and FSG, gone for a generation.  At a time when
we have more images available than ever before, we're sitting around looking
at the pictures, and not reading the articles.

So let's be positive and provoke a discussion on what actually constitutes a
glyph, and form a concensus on the matter so we can move forward.  Right.
Been there, done that.  All newbies see EVA as the first transcription, the
stroke-based nature influences their thinking, and all other arguments are
out the window.  Meanwhile, older members have been burned by the argument
and aren't willing to engage in such a potentially contentious debate.  To
me it's just not that difficult to record what the man wrote, to include the
nuances, and argue the differences later.  When a change is made, offer the
stats and the concensus that led to the change as an historical note, and
move on.  Not that difficult at all.

But we'll not get there in the near future.  EVA is the spoken language of
the day, and few if any can invoke Currier as the middle language to bridge
the gap.  No one speaks the language of the VMS any more, yet you're all
willing to produce statistic after statistic based on what?  God knows.  And
you Jeff, you take the cake (no pizza though).  Transcription doesn't matter
in a crypto effort - what school did you attend, George Bush U.?  Don't
worry, I won't try to confuse you with the facts, just keep going forward...
er, in whatever direction you're travelling, anyway.  You'll eventually get
where you're going, even if it's only where you wind up.

My goodbyes to all,

GC
















> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx]On
> Behalf Of Jeff
> Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2003 7:33 PM
> To: vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: VMs: Image Source, Accuracy of Transcriptions
>
>
> Rene Zandbergen <r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote
> >
> > --- Jeff <jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > I haven't reached a dead end :-)
> > >
> >
> > Pardon my being very frank, Jeff, but I think
> > you're walking up a dead alley. That's my opinion
> > and I may be wrong, but let me explain why I think
> > so.
> > The main reason is that you're working from
> > a transcription file in Eva, and you need to
> > keep a close eye on what it looks like in the
> > VMs. Thus, a word like 'fachys', which you're
> > interpreting as a 6-character word does not
> > look like a 6-character word. Same with 'ataiin'
> > which is on the same line.
> > As long as you don't deviate from this path,
> > there will be a dead end.
>
> Here the top line is letter for letter a representation of the
> first line of
> pepys cookbook. It is based on using pure EVA and is a
> modification of what
> I believe the VMS algorithm to be and would have made it more uncrackable
> than it already is as it would have masked the repetition in word endings,
> which is the biggest clue.
>
> Now before you come back and tell me I am wasting my time, you tell me how
> this works. Then I'll believe I'm wasting my time. You have the plain text
> and the encipherment. Want to take the challenge. All the information is
> there
>
> cy.odei.f.ftke.ti.arcta.si.nhe.qhcky.ac.yook.tslshde
> dd.ed.d.tyfltk.hp.ase.tcai.ifook.siiy.dp.hai.imlc.shsdy.do.ot.cty
>
> cookbook plain text
>
> to.make.a.stew.of.flesh.yf.thy.potte.be.iiij.gallons
> do.yn.a.quarte.of.wyn.take.fayre.befe.of.the.fore.loyne.or.of.the
>
> Jeff
>
>
> P.S. It is true that f has a special meaning but it's use does not affect
> the method I am using
>
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