Re: VMs: Arguments against a code book?

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

  > [Elmar:] After all, you can create words "at will" from the
  > Voynichese alphabet, and use them as tokens to designate cleartext
  > words. (Provided you devise some kind of order, you can even sort
  > your word lists for faster reference. ;-) That would eliminate the
  > intermediate step of interpreting them as numbers.

Ah, but the Voynichese words are definitely not created "at will":
there are all sorts of restrictions on what characters may appear
where. Some letters apparently only occur once per word, others may
occur several times; some letters occur only next to others, etc. It
is because of those complicated restrictions that people have been
thinking of Roman numerals:

   V,L,D may appear only once each.
   I may appear up to three consecutive times, only after V,X,L,C,D,M
   I may appear once before V or X, never before L,C,D,M
   I cannot appear both before and after V,X.
   X may appear up to three consecutive times, only after L,C,D,M
   etc.
   
Voynichese is obviously not a straightforward mapping of Roman
numerals, because it has too many symbols, and some symbols may occur
multiply but non-consecutively, etc. Offhand its "system" seems more
complicated than Roman numerals --- but Roman numerals themselves
would probably seem extremely complicated to someone who did not know
their logic.
   
All the best,

--stolfi

   
   
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