RE: VMs: Image Source, Accuracy of Transcriptions

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Larry wrote:

> blah blah blah

Quite so.  I believe I owe you an apology.  I was attempting to state my
mind and my frustrations in one swell-foop, as it were, and got lost.  I was
not attempting to dismiss anything you or others have done.  In fact, I have
a great respect for most members of this list.  Because of that, I'm going
to answer one of your questions first, though it came last in your post.

> But, hey, you have all the answers, don't you?  Oh, wait, no you
> don't - you just have criticism.

If I didn't have any answers I doubt I'd have any room to criticize, though
my many attempts have been at constructive criticism, not divisive
criticism.  At times I do go overboard, there's no doubt.  I try to say
things in a way that does not offend, but if I say what I know, it is simply
offensive to others of different persuasions, and I've always been very
direct in my commentary.  But this comes from KNOWING something you don't
and pointing the direction a multitude of times, not because I hold myself
higher than anyone else.  I'm not nearly as bright as many on this list,
just a hard worker and unworthy apprentice with a single focus, to solve the
VMS.

This list is not a group effort, but an exchange of ideas.  I have no
obligation to divulge my knowledge to anyone, but I've always been
forthcoming when questions are asked.  In almost five years, only one person
has demonstrated a durable interest in what I have to offer, and that person
has been granted the information necessary to reach the conclusions I have
reached.

I'm leaving the list for health reasons, which may account for some of my
testiness, though I take full responsibility for my words.  But I'm not
about to leave you cold.  Here it is again, for what it's worth.

Considering that his name is on it, Askham most probably wrote the Voynich,
or at least the A pages.  LC Strong's decipherment is fundamentally correct.
I've shot down my share of would-be cryppies in the Baconian realm, so if I
didn't have proof of this, I certainly wouldn't make the claim and subject
myself to the same humiliation I've heaped on others.  I would have been the
first to take Strong apart if I had discovered an inherent weakness in his
system, yet instead I discovered far more than I expected in the way of
answers.

It's vogue to dismiss LC's work out of hand, but not one of you has to date,
taken his work apart and put it back together, even though it has been
available to the list for almost 5 years.  It's all about the effort one is
willing to go to learn something new.  When I first entered into
correspondence with my dear friend Nick as an example, he had the idea he
was going to do a study of LC's work, but never did it.  Had he done so, I
would have paved his way with gold.  I still support Nick, as he has
boundless potential, and may one day come around again.

As for me, I've had great success on the B pages at this point, but have
only recently focused on the A pages.  I'm not quite ready yet to claim my
pizza, but I know from reading what's coming from the list that I have
absolutely no competition, so time is not a pressing matter.  Since I don't
get paid to work on the Voynich, the work has been done in spurts, and a lot
of precious spare time has been spent on background information about the
author and the system in use.  Some of this I've already released to the
list, in fact most of it is available in chunks, if you'll check.

Enough grand-standing for you? Enough for me anyway.  On to your other
comments.

> I am talking about statistical analysis here.  If you took a
> sample of my handwriting you would find a glyph "this" which
> appears as one item but is actually 4.
>
> This is not a printed work, so yes, we have to guess as to what
> constitutes a single glyph.

I was also talking about statistical analysis in several recent posts
concerning glyphs.  You can write what you see, and then perform textual
analysis to determine if a variant or mutant should be considered a separate
glyph.  Of course this does depend on what has influenced what you "see".
Early transcribers saw glyphs when they viewed the manuscript for the first
time.  If you see strokes instead of glyphs, you'd better check your
influence at the door, to be honest.

> I would guess that you believe all word breaks are spaces too.
> Have you actually SEEN any old documents?  Look at latin.
> Characters and words run together.  "t" runs into letters.  "cr"
> can look a lot like eva "ch"  So can "ti"  and both "ni" and "ui"
> can look like eva "iii" but in Courier it is one glyph.

For transcription purposes it is universally accepted that "word breaks" are
spaces.  You would have to have *special* knowledge about the author's
original intentions not available to the rest of us to transcribe the
document any different.  You have no such knowledge, Larry.  Have I SEEN any
old documents?  NO, I'm a simple country boy and stuttering dolt who has
never traveled any further than I can walk in a day and still be home by
supper-time.  This is what you suspected, correct?

I admit I slept through Latin in high school and college, but found a
renewed interest in the language when I began certain studies.  I am most
interested in 16th/17th century Latin, I have transcribed approximately
3,000 pages of Latin from this time so it could be available to those who
share my interests, and have translated several items not yet present in the
English language.  I'm no professional, more of a hobbyist, but I do have
some passing familiarity with the tongue and the documents, and I do not
agree with your assessment of the VMS script as it relates to Latin
manuscripts.

> For statistics Courier is absolutely NO good.  EVA aint great
> either.  But at least it breaks apart some glyphs into their
> OBVIOUS components where Courier is just plain stupid in that regard.

As much as I believe you believe what you believe, I'd suggest you're in
error.  There are no OBVIOUS components to VMS glyphs.  They are written as
they are written, no subterfuge involved here, no hidden messages, no
stroke-based encoding.  A glyph is a glyph, simple and effective.  What you
see between the spaces are glyphs, nothing more, nothing less.  When I made
reference to the cursive nature of 'm' and 'n', I was simply saying the
author used a down stroke instead of a hump, as we use today in our cursive.
A down stroke was natural for the writing of the time, just as a hump is
natural for our writing, since we no longer raise pen from paper to complete
most of our letters.  An 'm' is still and 'm', and an 'n' is still an 'n'.
They composed letters from strokes, and as we are increasingly more lazy, we
compose them from continuous flow of the pen on paper.  Nothing sinister
about my comments in this regard, and no hidden agenda in the VMS script,
sorry.

I agree with you, Currier was stupid.  Stupid enough not to ask for other's
perceptions, and stupid enough not to color his thinking when he transcribed
the VMS.  He wrote what he saw, nothing more, nothing less.  Transcription
itself is a mechanical thing that requires no higher thought functions.  The
makers of EVA were already quite familiar with the VMS script, but chose to
represent it in new ways.  Their choice, but not what I would call actual
"transcription", since they had a plan which dictated their moves along the
way.  Was Currier stupid, or practical?  His transcription is the closest
thing you have at present to the actual Voynich glyphs, of that I'm quite
certain.  You can add to this somewhat, but you're not going to be able to
find better than his basic perceptions as a corner stone.

Transcription is wiping your mind clean and representing the glyphs as they
appear on paper, as if you've never seen them before.  You get to page 23,
see a glyph, and say "hey, I saw the same thing on 1r but didn't know what
to make of it at the time."  It's a once over, twice over, three times over
process that leads to the best representation of what you see on the page.
It's not a higher level thinking process, merely a "match the image"
process.  EVA is admittedly not what I deem a transcription, as they seek a
higher function in their efforts.  As I said, they did incorporate elements
into their effort that allowed for proper representation, but these elements
have been ignored by transcribers, rendering their transcriptions
inaccurate.  Sometimes simple is simply better.

Take me for a raving lunatic, Larry, but I reiterate my basic points.  Start
at the beginning and work to the end.  After recording several thousand
glyphs as you see them, you'll gain a great sense of what a glyph actually
is.  When you record page after page, you'll even start to "see" when things
change in the script, something not obvious to the naked eye.  In the end
you'll be left with the opinion I hold, that it's much simpler than we all
make it out to be.  The lunatic coming out once again - if you only knew
what I knew, you'd know how simple it really is.

GC

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