Re: VMs: NSU review of Rugg (2003)...

[Gabriel Landini <G.Landini@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Gordon,

On Thursday 18 December 2003 11:36, Gordon Rugg wrote:
> There are two reasons. One is that there are various hypotheses which are
> compatible with the table and grille; the main ones are:
> 1: meaningless gibberish with no meaningful text

I suspect that this could never be proven to be true.
I mean, what would be a next step to investigate this possibility?

> 2: meaningless gibberish as padding, plus some meaningful text
> 3: meaningful text

Ok.

> I've identified a couple of ways in which the table and grille could be
> used for reversible encoding of material. It's possible to eliminate the
> first fairly definitely, because of the degree of repetition in successive
> words of the manuscript. The second also appears unlikely to have been used
> because of the degree of repetition between successive lines of the
> manuscript.

This is interesting. Are these degrees of repetition measurable in a generic 
sense or only with a set of constructed tables?

> In brief, I'm simply saying that the manuscript can be explained as a hoax
> containing only meaningless gibberish; there's no evidence at present of
> any meaningful text hidden among gibberish. That doesn't mean that we can
> definitely exclude meaningful text, and I'd be delighted if someone found
> some.

And so would I! :-)

> > That is interesting too. How complex should this grille have to be to
> > explain ALL the vms?
>
> I suspect that about seven or eight tables were used; I don't know how many
> grilles. That suspicion comes from two directions. From attempting to
> replicate the manuscript, I found that the table needs to be changed
> periodically, and producing a manuscript the size of the VMS would take
> about half a dozen tables. From the textual evidence in the manuscript, I
> suspect that the difference between Voynich A and B reflects table A1 and
> table B1; other sections of the manuscript are probably derived from
> modifications to table A1 and table B1 (e.g. table A2, table B2, etc).


What about the weirdoes?
If table and grille are used, shouldn't these be only restricted to certain 
areas of the vms? (I am talking about weirdoes and uncommon letters that 
appear more than once like eva <b>).
Have you looked whether these cluster to certain sections and if their 
presence correlate with other unusual occurrences (therfore suggesting that 
the same table/grille was used?)

Cheers,

Gabriel



______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list