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Re: VMs: Viola tricolor



Hi GC,

At 04:12 26/05/2004 -0600, GC wrote:
BTW, snake oil I've seen in alchemical herbals

...not forgetting the nice green Visconti-like snake on f43v... :-)


but pixie dust? What's the Latin for that? :-)

Perhaps he misheard "pixidae"? :-)


Funny, I was saying the same thing to someone privately a few days ago.
That would be the same person who likes to poke fun at my written
vernacular, which occasionally contains such phrases as "there y' go"! :-)
Shucks ma'am, I cain't talk any different 'n I know!

Though it's not part of my regular speech, I've actually been using it in emails for years: however, any time you'd like me to poke fun at your vernacular (which bone is that connected to?), just say & I'll be happy to oblige, y'hear? :-)


BTW, an a priori approach to the text itself goes a long way in eliminating
such ideas as "verbose cipher", "cipher pairs", etc.  These ideas rely on
concepts of text compression or expansion, and spaces being arbitrary, where
the evidence, both a priori and mathematical, suggests that the spaces are
more often than not in their proper place and the text is consistent and of
normal length.

Well... while you're mostly right, perhaps the devil's in the details on this one. Text like <oro.ror> (where the spacing appears to have been deliberately misinserted) and the Currier Language A split <ol> pairs makes me question the assumption that all spaces are real.


Also: you've talked about half-spaces many times before - maybe some half-spaces work to break up excessively long words, which would be a weak point of [you guessed it] verbose ciphers. So, perhaps we're all talking about the same thing, ultimately. :-)

As always, I'm happy to be of little or no help at all, and if ever I can be
of any less help or assistance, please don't hesitate to contact Nick.

You're far too kind: though I would never claim to be able to offer as little help as you. :-)


Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....


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