VMs: RE: some thoughts/observations [forwarded for William Edmondson]

["John Grove" <John@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

	Ouch! Me & Newbold?

> Equally interesting, in relation to some recent emails on the VMS-list, is
the observation that some characters may be hidden in other characters
(there are illustrations and explanations). Newbold appears to consider four
possibilities.  Letters can be concealed
by hiding fragments in other unrelated letters.  The concealment can be by:
i) adaptation to contour; ii) juxtaposition; iii) superposition; iv)
extrusion.  Think of this as character abbreviations hidden in other
characters.  Cf.  John Groves' emails about bits of characters. [However,
this too is a source of great flexibility, with every character being some
sort of Rorschach test for discovery of other characters!]

>In short - Newbold was there - check out his schemes before re-inventing
them!


	Not quite the same thing. Even your description of Newbold's letters
concealing fragments in other unrelated letters is quirky enough to
immediately be way out of what my Rorschach test sees 8-)

	I'll give a quick evolution of my time on the list... I first saw an
article in 1987 explaining Brambaugh's solution and immediately said to
myself - that's nuts (I'll leave the details out). I'm not a musician - but
I saw a lot of potential for what could have been a single line musical
notation... nah, that's crazy - just look at all the labels. Well then, how
about a tonal transcription system... and so on, and so on... What remains
unfortunately consistent is that almost all VMS characters are constructed
in a very regular pattern. I'm not talking about looking for hidden pieces -
I'm talking about looking at an 's' and and 'r' in the VMS and seeing they
look identical except for the initial stroke being either curved like a 'c'
or straight like an italic 'i'. The same goes for 'b' and 'n', 'g' and 'm',
'cth' and 'ith', etc...

	Take a look at the large number of wierdo characters and many of them
actually look just like two end ligatures... some potentially more common
than others 'sh' for example could be an 's' end-ligature immediately
followed by an 'h' end-ligature. One step more: There are a few instances
where we have abbreviated wierdo's... The '@' is the best example, but there
are a number of cho, chy, shy shortened wierdo's - where the final character
isn't separated from the ch.

	As for re-inventing what's been done before - hey, even the archives have
an immense amount of newbie rehashes of the same ol' stuff. No problem
rehashing old ideas to try and look at them in a different light. Hmmm.
Strong comes to mind. Anyway, the point is that I don't think Newbold can
really be compared to the two-stroke engine!

	John.

	Oh, and welcome aboard. It's great to have people who can reach out to
those libraries and get their hands dirty.




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